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To Albert Erskine [Woodcock, 111] Lowry wrote: "significance of "interlube" has passed from my mind. But it might have something to do with the London Daily Herald or the United Press, if that matters. Cable is based on a real one and used by permission of the reporter who sent it I having sat in at the concoction thereof. Cable was, until lately, in my possession." That cable, long missing, has turned up in the Templeton collection [1-1] at UBC. A marginal note [UBC 29-15] reads: "Verify cable. Only mistake I can find is newspapermen. We can get accents exactly from cable itself." The original telegram is to the Daily Herald, reads "inteltube", and is unsigned; someone has written on it "140 words", a figure cited by Hugh in an early revision [UBC 29-12, 1], and dated it as June 25. Hugh had earlier been attached to the London Echo.
94.2 head-coming antisemitic campaign.
The story Hugh has "got wind of" [61], has complex political implications, given the ambiguous feelings of Mexico towards Britain and Germany. The C.T.M., or Confederation of Mexican Workers, has issued a petition objecting "to certain Teutonic huggermugger" [96], behind the threatened expulsion from Mexico of "small Jewish textile manufacturers"; Hugh has discovered through a "reliable source" that the German legation in Mexico City has been actively behind the campaign, sending anti-Semitic propaganda to the Mexican Department of Internal Affairs. Shops and businesses of the small Jewish community in Mexico City were frequently the target of such fascist vigilante groups as the "goldshirts" (a widespread paramilitary organisation that attacked the unions and striking workers), and Nazi organizations within Mexico tried to whip up racial hatred and industrial tension in an effort to bring down the Cárdenas government and keep Mexico out of the war. The campaign started in 1937 and gathered momentum during 1938, when Mexico's economic situation became more precarious. The textile industry, allegedly operated by small Jewish firms, was a target of the labour unions as well as of the fascist agitators (hence their peculiar collusion implied in Hugh's "propetition" and "proexpulsion" in the telegram).
On 24 June the C.T.M. [see #94.3] petitioned the secretary of the interior to take advantage of the constitution, which, they argued, allowed him to expel any "alien" from Mexico. On 23 June, embarrassed by the curious alliance developing between left and right, the general secretary of the C.T.M. explained to the foreign press that Mexico was not anti-Semitic and accused the German legation of espionage and of giving money to "conservative newpapers" that continued an anti-Jewish press campaign. The fascist influence grew: trade relations were established with Germany and Japan; Jewish refugees were sent back (2 November 1938); laws were passed limiting their entry into Mexico; and in 1939 there were anti-Jewish riots in Mexico City. Hugh's telegram reflects accurately much of the confused political background.
C.T.M., the "Confederación de Trabajadores de México" ("Confederation of Mexican Workers"), whose support of and by the government of Lázaro Cárdenas was the most crucial factor behind the fulfillment of many of the reforms set out in law after the 1910-20 Revolution. The C.T.M., formed in 1936, was the most important of all Mexican unions and represented the vast majority of organised workers. Ashby comments [274-75]:
a Congress for the Unification of the Labor Movement was held in Mexico City, and the outcome was the formation of the C.T.M., a central federation composed of independent national trade unions, primarily industrial in structure .... Although the organization was composed of unions of diverse strengths, philosophies, and tactics, it reflected, in general, the qualities of its head, Lombardo Toledano. The organization claimed to embrace no single socio-economic philosophy but to be merely a popular front of labor unions designed to strengthen labor's condition through both collective bargaining and the support of "revolutionary" political leaders. The C.T.M., containing perhaps a million workers, became the dominant labor central of the Cárdenas era.
Cárdenas refused to let the C.T.M. absorb the unions representing peasants and government workers and thus kept control of it, but from the outset the collaboration of his government with the C.T.M. permitted the effective implementation not only of labour but also of wider social and political reforms.
94.4 the Oficina Principal of the Compañia Telegráfica Mexicana Esq., San Juan de Letrán e Independencia, México, D.F.
The address on the real-life telegram. The main office of the Mexican Telegraph Company was in 1938 on the corner (despite Lowry's confusing punctuation, "Esq." means esquina) of San Juan de Letrán (now Lázaro Cárdenas) and Independencia, in the Federal District (‘D.F.’) of Mexico.
94.5 gladstone bag.
A travelling bag with flexible sides on a rigid frame that opens flat into two compartments; named for William Ewart Gladstone, the nineteenth-century English prime minister.
94.6 eyes in my fee ... as well as straw.
The conjunction of eyes and straw forms an allusion to T. S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men', and the image of Guy Fawkes in that poem may hint at the probable fate of Hugh's quixotic enterprise. Lowry offered Clemens ten Holder an elaborate explanation [23 April 1953; CL 2, 377-78]: "There is an old English soldier's expression – I've heard my brother use it – when describing someone who is unreliable or whom one dislikes to this effect: So and so is a dung-cart except for the straw and that's in his feet. Because Hugh has stopped automatically while reading a telegram and when he wasn't looking where he was going, on the edge of a pothole, he reflects that he must have eyes in his feet. Because he is going through a period of hating himself too he imagines the straw in his feet, (as in the soldier's saying above). There's also the word strawfoot, for soldier; straw man, for a fake. Something like Eliot's hollow man only made of straw." Hugh's "sauntering" stops at the edge of a pothole, but that of the Consul (in Chapter V) ends at the brink of the barranca. Hugh’s metaphors and his sense of frozen time are self-consciously cinematic.
95.1 clothed entirely in sunlight.
Revelation 12:1, "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." This woman, who gives birth to a child who kills the great dragon, is usually identified with Mary and is the antithesis of the Whore of Babylon, with whom the Consul has previously identified Yvonne [see #46.5].
95.2 Jack London's Valley of the Moon.
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A novel published in 1913 by Jack London, clearly a favourite of Hugh's [see #157.10]. The novel's hero is Billy Roberts, brawny teamster and part-time prizefighter, and its heroine, Saxon Brown, who works in an Oakland laundry (her name symbolising the purity and strength of the Anglo-Saxon race – the irony of "Brown" escaped the author). The first part of the novel explores the proletarian life of Oakland and the labour strife of the 1890s, but after Bill loses his job and Saxon her child, they quit the city and seek a purer air and life, looking for their own "Valley of the Moon", which, after meeting a thinly disguised version of the author, they find in the Sonoma Valley of northern California. Jack London's Valley of the Moon was a 129-acre area of volcanic rock out of which he envisaged creating an agricultural Eden of happy workers and beautiful fields (it is now the Jack London State Historical Park near Glen Ellen), but was in reality a monument to the vast wealth he earned by writing. Hugh, in this chapter a Sailor on Horseback (the title of Irving Stone's 1938 biography of Jack London), considers himself a figure in the Jack London heroic mould, but his socialism is equally fraught with contradictions.
95.3 the German bookstore opposite Sandborns [sic].
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Sanborns' House of Tiles (between Madero and Cinco de Mayo in downtown Mexico City), a seventeenth-century building covered with blue-and-white Puebla tiles, is one of the city's best-known landmarks. Originally a private mansion, it later housed the exclusive Jockey Club; then, for a short time after the Revolution, it served as headquarters for the first national labour union in Mexico before being bought by the brothers Sanborn, who turned it into the restaurant-tea room that quickly became the city's smartest meeting-place. The German bookstore, long gone, is yet another reminder of the ubiquitous German presence, and there is considerable irony in Hugh's following up his telegram by buying, in a German bookstore, a novel which advocates blatantly prejudiced views of racial purity [see #95.2].
95.4 on the Ebro they were retreating.
The Ebro is the second largest river of the Iberian peninsula, flowing in the north of Spain some five hundred miles southeast between the Pyrenees and the Iberian Mountains to the Mediterranean. The area around Gandesa, about seventy miles from the delta, was the scene of one of the most decisive battles in the Spanish Civil War from August to November, 1938. At this stage the Republican forces were under great pressure, the Nationalists controlling the area along the Ebro and cutting off the Republican forces in Barcelona from those in Valencia. On 25 July, the Republicans under Modesto embarked on an offensive, crossing the Ebro, capturing the strategic high places about Gandesa, and taking four thousand Nationalist prisoners. In early August the major battle took place at Gandesa, but while the Republican advance was contained, the Nationalists could not at first regain the captured territory. After six weeks of heavy fighting and bombing, the Republicans were forced to retreat even though they held most of their ground. On 30 October a long-awaited Nationalist counter-offensive began (Hugh could have heard the news, but the timing is fine), and on the night of 1-2 November, after heavy assaults and bombing, the Republicans became convinced that all was lost. They retreated with heavy losses, and by the eighteenth no Republicans remained west of the Ebro. Casualties were high, much material had to be abandoned, and in effect the battle marked the beginning of the end for the Republicans.
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The phrase echoes in Hugh's mind, as a sign of the guilt he feels about dallying with Yvonne; his "betrayal" of the Republicans thus acts as a correlative for his betrayal of Geoffrey. Lowry's notes [UBC WT 1-11, 4] are drawn from Henry Buckley's Life and Death of the Spanish Republic (1940), as discussed by Rick Asals, 'Henry Buckley's Spanish Civil War and Lowry's' [MLR 25: 13-28]. Buckley is sympathetic to the Republican cause and acrimonious about Britain's failure to intervene, which he considers a political and moral failure, views that echo Hugh’s. Buckley states [392ff] that the Ebro offensive under General Modesto [see #232.1] was launched on July 25, a Republican offensive. It lasted nearly four months until the night of 14-15 November, when the last forces drew back across the Ebro. In four months they had lost 10,000 killed and 50,000 injured. The government was cut off, save for an iron railway bridge near Mora de Ebro [see #213.3].
95.5 Bill Hodson.
Bill Hodson is the cowboy star whose leading lady Yvonne had been in three pictures when she was fifteen [262]; the name is fictional, but in a letter to Albert Erskine [Woodcock, 111], Lowry writes "For Bill H. – substitute Bill Hod." He may have in mind William S. Hart [see #60.3], suggesting an even greater amount of theatricality about Hugh's get-up.
95.6 How absolutely something or other.
This impossibly British phrase entered the early revisions ("Hugh Fernhead" was American), followed by Hugh's comment, "I thought you were Louise Bogan's Medusa for a moment" [UBC 29-12, 3]. As Asals suggests [Making, 422], the unflattering comparison is Lowry's way of paying an oblique debt for the sense of motion transformed to a sudden stillness (a theme of the poem) that has defined Hugh's reaction on seeing Yvonne.
96.1 the new message from García.
Alluding to the heroics of Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, who carried a message in April 1898 into the hills of Cuba for General Calixto García, leader of rebel guerrillas in the Spanish-American War. Rowan was to determine what kind of help García needed, and he got the message through. The incident stirred Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) to write his best-selling "preachment" or inspirational tract, ‘A Message to Garcia’ (1899), a highly wrought eulogy of Rowan as a man of action, who does what is needed, for whom the world cries out. Hubbard's tract was the basis for the 1936 Fox photoplay, Message to Garcia.
96.2 Teutonic huggermugger.
German secrecy and interference in Mexican politics [see #94.2]. Jan Gabrial tells of friends in Mexico City, Marcia and Alfred Miller, and Ethel and Manolo Cervantes, who worked for the Cárdenas regime and warned of the Sinaquistas and Cristeros. She cites Allan Chase's Falange (1943), which discusses the Nazi influence forged in Mexico under the aegis of General Wilhelm von Faupel, "part of the vast network of Falange espionage, propaganda, smuggling, murder, and torture" [Inside the Volcano, 122].
96.3 Hugh slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.
An unthinking action with disastrous consequences, for that jacket will be worn by Geoffrey when he encounters the militia in the Farolito with the telegram as his only identification.
96.4 head tax.
There used to be a flat $10 duty on cattle brought in from Mexico to the United States, but never on U.S. cattle taken to Mexico. Hugh's jest, "disguised as a cow", obliquely refers to wild Texans (patones, or "big-hooves") indistinguishable from their beasts: "I'm wild and woolly and full of fleas, / And never been curried below the knees."
96.5 England being persona non grata here.
The expropriation of British oil interests by President Cárdenas in 1938 [see #30.1] and the subsequent British retaliation rendered British subjects in Mexico open to abuse or even danger, as Graham Greene reports in The Lawless Roads [226-27]:
All that happened was that the atmosphere of hostility thickened – and directed itself against me. A drunken group passed and repassed, throwing out gibes; they had revolvers under their waistcoats, so there was nothing to be done but sit, like a prudish maiden lady, pretending not to hear. I was suffering for the ancient wrongdoing of the oil pioneers, the tiresome legal rectitude of the English Government.
97.1 Isn't the garden a wreck.
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Yvonne's words to Hugh are almost identical to those she used to Geoffrey [74], and thus evoke something of the desolate garden scene and lost love of Tennyson’s 'Mariana'. Her sudden change of topic barely conceals her unease, while Hugh's unspoken comment, "They are losing the Battle of the Ebro", also reveals his underlying guilt. Despite its beauty, the unweeded garden is a wreck: the bougainvillea is an emblem of deceit [see #142.3]; the fragrant pink and white flowers of the oleander are highly poisonous; and the flowerbed [98] is strangled by "a coarse green vine" –convolvulus – used consistently as a symbol of something that chokes proper growth.
In The Holy Kabbalah [VIII.i, 261], a section entitled 'The Myth of the Earthly Paradise', A.E. Waite states that the Garden of Eden is in one sense the mystery of sex (embodied in womanhood) and that this garden was ravished. Yvonne comments [98] that her garden was "like Paradise", but it is now in all senses a fallen landscape, and she must take some responsibility for that Fall, rather than simply "get the hell out of it" with Hugh.
97.2 oleander.
A small, evergreen shrub of the dogbane family, with clusters of white, pink, red or yellow flowers. It is one of the most poisonous plants known, though Pliny the Elder claimed in his Naturalis Historia (77 AD) that despite its toxicity it could cure snakebite.
97.3 El Paso ... Chihuahua ... Cusihuriachic [sic].
(a) El Paso, in southwest Texas near the Mexican border, is the largest of border cities and a major railroad and cattle centre.
(b) Chihuahua, capital of the state of the same name, is some 220 miles south of El Paso and is a road and rail centre in the heart of the Mexican cattle country (hence a most likely destination for a cattle truck).
(c) Cusihuiriachic, a small town some 55 miles southeast of Chihuahua, at the eastern foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental, is a rail terminus and mining centre with a small airport.
97.4 the Foreign Legion.
La Légion Étrangère, the French military force formed in 1831 to serve in North Africa. The officers and NCOs were predominantly French, but the men came from all corners of the globe, often serving under false names to escape their pasts. The conditions of enlistment are stated by a weary recruiting sergeant in P. C. Wren’s Beau Geste [170]:
The engagement volontaire for La Légion Étrangère is for five years, in Algiers, or any other French colony, and the pay is a sou a day. A legionnaire can re-enlist at the end of the five years, and again at the end of ten years. At the end of fifteen years he is eligible for a pension according to his rank. A foreigner, on completion of five years' service, can claim to be naturalized as a French subject.
The legion was basically infantry, but cavalry and paratroop battalions were added later. It operated in French territories throughout the world, particularly in North Africa, but also in Mexico 1863-67, and later in Syria and Indochina. The legion had a deserved reputation for toughness and attracted many "semi-fascist blokes" by its discipline and ruthlessness.
98.1 the muted voice of England long asleep.
The Consul's snoring implies England's failure to intervene in the Spanish Civil War; a point made explicitly in the 1940 Volcano [167] where England is likened to Ralph Hodgson's old bull waiting for death [see #273.2], liable to wake up and find itself in the same position as Spain; in the 1940 text the Consul, however, is wide awake. Somnolence, in Broch's The Sleepwalkers, corresponds to the moral failure to "intervene" in political affairs (such as Spain), a theme that is more pervasive in the 1940 text. In a late revision [UBC 29-13, 2], Hugh asked, "Where's our ruddy monarch, as Prince who-was-it remarked?"; this suggests the Prince Regent, impatient to supplant his father, mad King George.
George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938) concludes with a vision of Englishmen "all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs." Though England was generally sympathetic to the Republican cause and did not at first discourage volunteers for Spain, she did not aid the Republicans politically or materially; indeed, Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, the passive acceptance of Franco's blockade [see #103.2], and the withdrawal of the brigades in September 1938 let the Republicans down badly at the crucial moment. Hugh's reproach of his "ruddy monarch" implies a like criticism of Geoffrey's neglect of Yvonne.
98.2 a long-tailed bird ... a crimson and white turkey.
Details recorded in the Mexican ‘Pegaso’ notebook [UBC 12-14].
The ambiguous bird leads the thoughts of Hugh and Yvonne to Robinson, a district in the southwest of Paris (coincidentally, next to the Vallée-aux-Loups – see #74.5). The area was so called when in 1848 an enterprising cafe owner, cashing in on the popularity of Johann Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), built a restaurant in the branches of a huge chestnut tree and turned the area beneath into a place for dancing and entertainment. The thoughts of Hugh and Yvonne remain "unspoken" because neither wishes to recall the day of their affair and hence their "betrayal" of the Consul. The unknown fate of the bicycles (one is meant to wonder what on earth could have happened, both to them and to Hugh and Yvonne) is paralleled by the unknown fate of the Consul's blue Plymouth [52].
98.4 Okies.
Migratory agricultural workers, particularly those forced in the 1930s to migrate from Oklahoma and the Dust Bowl area because of drought, soil erosion and farm foreclosure. Thousands set out west in search of better opportunities, but their presence in Texas and California was often resented by the established settlers, who not denied them land and work and sometimes (as Hugh has discovered) actively sought to turn them back. The classic treatment of their plight is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an epic account of an emigrant family trying to leave the Dust Bowl and reach the promised land of California.
99.1 Nosey Parker.
An inquisitive person. Originally, Matthew Parker (1504-75), Archbishop of Canterbury, who introduced many unpopular reforms into the Anglican Church. The expression became regular navy idiom ("Dusty" Miller, "Pincher" Martin, "Nosey" Parker, etc.).
The capital of Bavaria, southern Germany; the scene of talks between Hitler and the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, which resulted in the ill-fated Munich agreement of 30 September 1938, whereby the British government, seeking to delay the outbreak of war or avoid it altogether, acceded to Hitler's demands that the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, be included without plebiscite within the German Reich. The policy of appeasement, which Chamberlain considered to have brought "peace with honour", was regarded by Hitler as diplomatic weakness and encouraged him to continue his policies of annexation. Like most British socialists, Hugh sees Munich as a betrayal, not only of the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia but of Republican hopes in Spain, for Chamberlain, delighted with his "success" over Czechoslovakia, suggested a similar conference to solve the Spanish problem. News of the proposal leaked out, causing the Republicans to fear that they were to share the same fate as the Czechoslovakia of Dr Benes.
99.3 the pinch-bottle of habanero.
Habanero (the name deriving from Havana, where it originated) is a rum-like aguardiente now made in Tabasco; a pinch-bottle is a bottle with pinched or indented sides.
99.4 the old bull-ring.
Weber's details, applied to Cuernavaca, are not historically true, nor altogether unrealistic. There is no bull-ring in Cuernavaca (there used to be one a few miles to the south), nor is there any record of the events Weber describes as having taken place. Lowry has taken an incident in Bajadoz, in Estamadura, Spain, 13 July 1911, after the town was captured by the Nationalists in August 1936, when fifty people, including women and children, were killed in a bull-ring that was used as a revolutionary headquarters. He may have embroidered it with details from Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva Mexico!, one scene of which depicted a crucifixion.
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The historical truth in Mexico, however, is grim enough. Morelos was a centre of Zapatista revolution 1910-20, and Cuernavaca came under siege several times from both revolutionary and governmental forces. Local historians (Aguirre and Díez) trace the ebb and flow of battle in detail up to the beginning of May 1916, when the government forces of General Pablo González took Cuernavaca, then simply say, in effect, without giving details of atrocities, that here began the era of blood, the most shameful days in the history of Morelos. The plunder, rape, torture, and execution that followed made the previous six years of confusion and slow starvation seem a fiesta in comparison.
99.5 The purple slopes ... of paradise.
Although the scene murmurs of peace, the conjunction of purple with paradise suggests an Eden already lost [see #14.8]; a suggestion further supported by the phallic image of lizards darting into the bougainvillea; the half-shored-in hole (a Swedenborgian gate to hell); the precipitous fields leading to the abyss; the prison watchtower and old bull-ring; and the current ravishing of China by Japanese armies astride all roads to Shanghai [180].
99.6 China.
Hugh's trip to China is modelled on Nordahl Grieg's assignment there in 1937 as a war correspondent, after which he went to Spain. Hugh's role in China, given how recent his visit was, is strangely suppressed. He could not have been with the Communist forces in the isolated northwest, so, like many Western pressmen, he must have been with the Nationalist forces under Chiang-Kai-Shek in the south, who were the main opposition to the invading Japanese (by October, astride all roads to Canton). ‘China’ is a private allusion to Lowry's short story (1934) of that title, on the theme that every man lies imprisoned in his own consciousness: "And you carry your horizon in your pocket wherever you are" [P & S, 54].
99.7 fell out of an ambulance.
An oblique reference to Ernest Hemingway, who was an ambulance driver in World War I and a newspaper correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and whose novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is set against the latter background. Hugh's will to action, to say nothing of his later role in the bull-throwing, is almost a parody of what Vladimir Nabokov has called Hemingway’s "bells, balls and bulls" [Strong Opinions, 80].
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The goat is a materialisation of the Consul, who has called himself a cabrón [69]. The sudden change, the patriarchal contempt, the destructive urge and Machiavellian eye [106] embody his malevolent feelings, which, as here, too often have the effect of driving Yvonne closer to Hugh. Compare Moby Dick [Ch. 99]: "stand aside! Here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed." Lowry confirmed the echo to Derek Pethick [6 March 1950; CL 2, 208], but added that he was conscious of reading it that way for the first time, it having never occurred to him that "there was any such zodiacal significance in Moby Dick". Frater Achad, in The Egyptian Revival [69], which Lowry had read, identifies Baphomet as a demon in the form of a goat.
100.1 incidence.
Lowry recorded the dictionary meanings of this word [UBC TM Ch.4, 28 verso], as "manner of fall or occurrence" or (physics) "falling of a projectile".
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It. "evil ditches"; in Dante's Inferno, the eighth circle of hell, consisting of ten circular trenches, or bolge, into which are placed seducers, panderers, flatterers, simoniacs, sorcerers, barrators, hypocrites, sowers of discord and falsifiers (likened by Hugh to journalists, the word that he was about to utter when the goat charged), to each of whom is meted an appropriate affliction.
100.3 prescinded.
L. praescindere, "to cut off in front"; hence, to withdraw attention from.
100.4 Bernal Díaz and his Tlaxcalans.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (c. 1492-1581), conquistador with Cortés and author of the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (finished in 1568, but not published until 1632). Although its objectivity is limited by the pride that Díaz took in the Spanish triumphs and by a sense of justification in all that was done, the True History is nevertheless an account that has all the colour and immediacy of first-hand experience. It is doubtful, however, that Lowry had read this before writing Under the Volcano, since all his references to Díaz could have been taken equally from Prescott [see #100.5].
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The Tlaxcalans were Indians from the independent republic of Tlaxcala [see #295.2], some six thousand of whom accompanied Cortés on his first visit to Tenochtitlán [see #27.3]. Many accompanied Cortés on his march south in April 1521 to capture Quauhnahuac. Without their assistance, Cortés could not have contemplated the subjugation of either city.
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William H. Prescott (1796-1859), American historian, whose History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), despite obvious errors of fact and a sometimes uncritical use of previous sources, remains the classic account in English of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Prescott's account is prejudiced by his assumptions of the natural superiority of European religious and social institutions over those of the "rude Indians" (often in defiance of the obvious facts), but it is a comprehensive and exciting account of an almost unbelievable set of exploits. The episode Hugh refers to is discussed in Prescott [VI.iii, 532-34] when Cortés, in the course of subduing some of the outlying cities before his attack on Tenochtitlán, arrived before Quauhnahuac, a town "singularly situated, on a projecting piece of land, encompassed by barrancas, or formidable ravines," to find his progress arrested by a vast barranca whose bridges had been broken in anticipation of the coming of the Spaniards. Prescott describes the chasm, then how the Spaniards managed to cross it to subdue the city:
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From the cliffs on the opposite sides of the barranca two huge trees shot up to an enormous height, and, inclining towards each other, interlaced their boughs so as to form a sort of natural bridge. Across this avenue, in mid air, a Tlascalan conceived it would not be difficult to pass to the opposite bank. The bold mountaineer succeeded in the attempt, and was soon followed by several others of his countrymen, trained to feats of agility and strength among their native hills. The Spaniards imitated their example. It was a perilous effort for an armed man to make his way over this aerial causeway, swayed to and fro by the wind, where the brain might become giddy, and where a single false movement of hand or foot would plunge him into the abyss below. Three of the soldiers lost their hold and fell. The rest, consisting of some twenty or thirty Spaniards, and a considerable number of Tlascalans, alighted in safety on the other bank.
Hugh's comment about it making even old Díaz's head swim is based on Prescott's footnote, quoting from the Historia verdadera, that "his head swam so ... that he scarcely knew how he got on." Prescott’s tendency towards exaggeration is exemplified in the above passage by the detail about three soldiers falling; they do in Díaz too, but the cost is one broken leg. The precise location of the crossing is unknown, but it is generally accepted that it was over the Amanalco Ravine [de Davila, 53], more or less where Hugh and Yvonne are standing.
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), German philosopher whose Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), 1918-22, was widely read between the wars. Spengler argues that civilisations, of which he counted eight so far, pass in a life-cycle from youth through maturity and old age to death, with that of Western Europe being in its last stages. Lowry was attracted by Spengler's cyclic view of history, but also by his use of Faustian imagery to define the condition of Western man, "a condition which pictured man as ageing and wasted, but still hoping to comprehend and achieve everything, including the impossible" [Kilgallin, ‘Faust’, 29]. Spengler's belief that human endeavours cannot prevent the decay of civilisations is very similar to the Consul's belief [309], that "there's a sort of determinism about the fate of nations," and, as Monbet notes [20], there is irony in Hugh citing Spengler, whose cyclic view of history is opposed to the communist philosophy of dialectic evolution.
Spengler often criticises the press (for example, Vol.II, XII.iv [460-65]), arguing that there should be freedom from rather than of the press. The passage Hugh alludes to (noted by Jakobsen [73]) is from Vol.I, X.vii [360]:
Diatribe belongs necessarily to the "religion of the irreligious" and is the characteristic form that the "cure of souls" takes therein. It appears as the Indian preaching, the Classical rhetoric, and the Western journalism. It appeals not to the best but the most, and it values its means according to the number of successes obtained by them. It substitutes for the old thoughtfulness an intellectual male-prostitution by speech and writing, which fills and dominates the halls and market-places of the megalopolis.
101.1 an English friend fighting in Spain.
In a letter to Albert Erskine [Woodcock, 111-12], Lowry identifies this friend as "John 'Volunteer in Spain' Summerfield [sic], who survived after all." John Sommerfield, author of Volunteer in Spain (1937), had served with the International Brigade at the battle for University City, where the De Quincey episode took place [see #101.4].
101.2 Franco.
Generalissimo Franciso Franco y Bahamonde (1892-1975), Spanish commander of the fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter dictator of Spain until his death. He had commanded the Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco and became chief of staff in 1935. Considered dangerous, he was sent to govern the Canaries in 1936, but with the growth of dissent upon the mainland, he flew to Morocco, landed troops in Spain, and with the aid of Hitler and Mussolini overthrew the Republican forces, establishing a right-wing dictatorship. Politically astute, he kept Spain neutral in World War II, though he displayed marked pro-Axis sympathies and consolidated his power in the peninsula. On his death, Spain reverted to the monarchy that Franco had intimated he would restore as early as 1947.
The grim reality of this University City is in marked contrast with the Consul's "ideal University" in Tortu [56]. In November 1936 Ciudad Universitaria, the university area on a hilltop in the northwest of Madrid, was the centre of fierce fighting in the Battle of Madrid between the attacking Nationalist forces led by General Mola and the entrenched Republican populace. Thanks to the support and experience of the International Brigades fighting beside them, the poorly armed Republicans were able to hold out against a vastly superior force with the result that there was no decisive outcome. Madrid remained for some time under siege, and the Republicans denied the Nationalists the important victory they sought.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), English essayist, critic, and opium addict. He is best known for his Confessions of an Opium Eater (1822), an account of his early years and gradual addiction to opium and of the tumultuous dreams and dreadful nights for eight years before he largely broke the habit. John Sommerfield, however, was reading De Quincey's Recollections of the Lakes and Lake Poets, which is even more incongruous in the given situation. In Volunteer in Spain [150], Sommerfield describes how he and a number of others (including John Cornford) were holed up in Philosophy and Letters, behind bullet-proof barricades of Indian metaphysics and early nineteenth-century German philosophy, and how he found a set of Everyman classics left behind:
On a cold morning I found De Quincey's Lake Poets and rolled myself up in a carpet and read voraciously; the day passed in a stupor, I was with Wordsworth and Coleridge, in another place, another time. Twice we had shelled the buildings opposite and twice I had to leave my book to shoot at the Falangists who popped out like rabbits when the shells burst.
In a letter to Albert Erskine [Woodcock, 111-12], Lowry says that the De Quincey episode is mentioned in Volunteer in Spain as well as in a letter to himself, but that "De Quincey comes in also because of Mr Quincey and knocking on the gate bit" [see #136.2].
101.5 Vin Rosé d'Anjou.
A quality wine, for refined socialist sympathies. In a late revision to Chapter VIII [UBC 30-10, 1], Hugh thinks of the Spanish Civil War and his friend "Jack", who had said "It's a nice wine" in the same way that he'd have said of the bridge at Mora de Ebro [see #213.3], "It's a nice bridge" (a phrase used in some drafts of Chapter VIII). A letter to Lowry from John Sommerfield [1947?; UBC 1-63] concludes: "There's no Vin Rosé d'Anjou left."
101.6 a dog named Harpo.
After Harpo Marx (1888-1964), with Chico and Groucho, one of the three celebrated Marx brothers, zany comedians and stars of such inspired nonsense as Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937). Chico played the piano eccentrically and spoke with an impossible Italian accent; Groucho had a painted moustache and a cigar and made most of the wisecracks; Harpo (real name Arthur) was the child-like mute who played the harp. Harpo had given a successful performance when he visited the Soviet Union in 1935, prefaced by a long speech by a Soviet producer on the role of humour in society, the social significance of Hollywood and the real meaning of Marx [Fischer, 300].
101.7 another friend who went to China.
A reminder that a similar civil war was being fought there between nationalist and communist forces. Lowry alludes specifically to a Cambridge contemporary, Julian Bell, nephew of Virginia Woolf and son of Clive Bell, who had been teaching English at Wu Han University in Central China on the outbreak of war, but who, "harassed as much by amorous complications in China as by what he thought was his conscience" [Weintraub, The Last Great Cause, 50], returned to England in March 1937. Although his family tried to dissuade him from joining up and prevailed upon him to take a noncombatant role, he insisted on going to Spain with the medical aid detachment. He drove an ambulance until it was smashed by a bomb, whereupon he went as a stretcher-bearer to the front, and was killed by an artillery shell, 18 July 1937, aged 29, having been in Spain only one month.
101.8 about a year before it started.
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The Spanish Civil War broke out on 16 July 1936 when army garrisons arose throughout Spain to support Franco. It drew to its close early in 1939, with the complete triumph of Franco's Nationalist forces.
101.9 the Loyalists.
The Republicans, that is, those loyal to the elected government of the Republic, as opposed to the Fascists or Nationalists under Franco; neither side had much time for the Monarchists supporting the exiled King Alfonso XIII, the Separatists wanting home rule in Catalonia and the Basque country, or the Anarchists, who rejected everybody else.
101.10 a sort of "freezing" of culture.
The Consul has also been reading Spengler [see #100.6], who defines culture as an organism, blooming and dying when its soul has actualised the sum of its possibilities, and ‘hardening’, ‘mortifying’ or ‘congealing’ (the words are Spengler's) at a certain level of civilisation [Vol.I, I.III.vii, 106]. Spengler talks of the ‘irreversibility’ of history [Vol.I, IV.i, 119], implying that each great cycle of history has its destiny that cannot be altered.
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A revealing passage in Conrad Aiken's Ushant [351] reveals what Geoffrey means by a "freezing" of culture, and suggests that Lowry took his argument (as he did the political views expressed by the Consul at the end of Chapter X) from Aiken rather than directly from Spengler. Aiken recalls a political argument with Lowry and what he had said:
Revolutions were a waste both of time and human material; – you lost a hundred or more years only to find yourself just where you'd begun. A revolution was an attempt to freeze society on a particular level, and this was itself stultifying, no matter what the level might be. If the Nazis had frozen theirs on a slightly higher level than the Russians, with a shade less destruction of its living inheritance of culture, well, that made it a trifle less wasteful, but that was the best that could be said for it.
102.1 the Madrid show.
In general terms, the Siege of Madrid, which lasted from October 1936 until virtually the end of the war in March 1939, when the Republican populace, half-starved and out of supplies and munitions, was forced to surrender to the Nationalist forces; specifically, the early part of that siege, towards the end of 1936, when a well-equipped Nationalist army of some twenty thousand, supported by German and Italian tanks and aircraft, tried to take Madrid by force, but in the Battles of Madrid and University City [see #101.3], an enormous but ill-armed urban mass, supported by some Russian weaponry and by the International Brigades, held out against them.
Buckley comments [258]: "this is one case I think where the solid determination of the majority of the people did result in the temporary victory of their cause." He adds [282]: "Franco and his German friends were anxious to show the Italians that they could stage just as good a show at Madrid as was being done on the Andalusian coast." Notable are the phrases ‘German friends’ and ‘show’. Lowry uses the ‘Madrid show’ to mirror Hugh's guilt about his lack of commitment to the cause; Buckley notes [261-62] that in November 1936, when the city seemed doomed, reporters were advised to get out, and most did.
Brihuega is the village in Guadalajara Province, central Spain, some fifty miles northeast of Madrid, in the vicinity of which the Battle of Guadalajara took place in March 1937. Italian forces on the Nationalist side, trying to capture the town of Guadalajara to facilitate the advance on Madrid, met with stiff Republican opposition, particularly from the International Brigades (which included an Italian division), were crushingly defeated, and lost two thousand men. The battle, a morale booster for the Republicans, effectively held up the advance on Madrid for some months, and much of the area remained in Loyalist hands until the close of hostilities. As Yvonne senses, Hugh feels somewhat guilty about not having been there at the time, the word "heel" again expressing a sense of betrayal [see #46.5]. Buckley notes [293]: "a tremendous defeat for the Italians."
102.3 he meticulously dropped his ravaged cigarette down the ravine.
An action summing the futility of war, which consigns so many to the abyss [see #47.4].
102.4 Cui bono?
L. "To whom the good" or, more commonly (as Hugh translates the words [117], "What's the good?" The words were made famous by Cicero, quoting in his Second Philippic from Lucius Cassius, who in a trial for murder had instructed a jury to enquire who would benefit by the crime. Hugh's cynicism ("the noble army of pimps and experts") is designed to throw Yvonne off the scent.
Buckley notes [415; UBC WT 1-11, 5]: "Many times I grumble at my work and express the wish that I were a boot-black instead of a reporter. But that is just a pose. Actually every reporter loves to feel that he is right up against the moving finger which is writing history." Hugh, dressed in his cowboy suit for a quixotic adventure, is not simply a poser.
102.6 since they got the Internationals out.
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In September 1936, the Russian ambassador in Madrid suggested that aid be given to the Republicans in the form of volunteers raised internationally by foreign Communist parties (but also including non-Communists), who would be organised by the Comintern (the Communist International) to form an international Red Army giving direct military assistance to the Spanish Republicans. Thousands of volunteers were raised in many different countries; they travelled to Albacete in Murcia, where they were organised into battalions along roughly national lines, given basic training, and armed. The International Brigades bore a heavy part of the fighting at Brihuega, Madrid and the Ebro, but by 1938, with the Nationalists clearly in the ascendancy and horrific tales emerging from Spain, the flow of volunteers dried up. Following the Munich agreement of September 1938 [see #99.2] and Stalin's growing understanding with Hitler, it was decided that all foreign volunteers should be pulled out, and in September-October 1938, with the Battle of the Ebro still unresolved, the brigades were officially withdrawn. Despite Hugh's bitterness, it is unlikely that the Munich agreement substantially "crimped" the Ebro offensive.
102.7 before Chamberlain went to Godesburg.
Bad Gödesberg, a spa outside Bonn in West Germany, was the scene of a preliminary conference between Chamberlain and Hitler on 22 September 1938, leading to the Munich pact of 30 September [see #99.2]. As Jakobsen notes [74], Hugh has confused the date of the meeting at Gödesberg with that of Munich, but what he says is true in substance: at Godesberg effective agreement, ratified at Munich, was reached on the fate of Czechoslovakia, and Chamberlain also agreed that despite the withdrawal of the International Brigades from Spain, Italian forces on the Fascist side could stay on.
Buckley describes the reaction to pulling out the Internationals [395; UBC WT 1-11, 5]: "This was a quixotic gesture which received little publicity because the world was watching Prague, not the Ebro, and it was just two days before Mr. Chamberlain went to Godesberg on the Rhine. Taking them out of the line weakened the army on the Ebro and deprived the Republicans of its toughest shock force" (in Hugh's words, "neatly crimped the Ebro offensive").
102.8 with half the last bunch of volunteers still rotting in gaol in Perpignan.
Perpignan, in southern France near the Spanish border, was the logical point of entry into Republican Spain, and most of the volunteers arriving overland were funnelled through it. Because of its proximity to Spain and its large Spanish population, it was an important centre for refugees, intrigue and arms smuggling. On 7 August 1936 a declaration of non-intervention was made by a number of countries, including Britain, and on 8 August France closed the frontier to the export of war materials. By February 1937 it was illegal to volunteer for Spain in all of the non-intervention countries, and many who tried were arrested and imprisoned in France on their way to the front. Perpignan was an internment centre for the retreating Loyalist forces in the latter stages of the war; many former Loyalists were interned there for years.
Buckley [293] notes that those caught were liable to six month's imprisonment. Asals records ['Spanish Civil War', 13] that in Lowry's early ‘Pegaso’ notebook [UBC 12-14] two young lovers, "Ed" and "Joey", affirm their love in terms of the larger purpose of going to Spain and fighting for the Republic; but Joey objects that they would be imprisoned in Perpignan and never reach Spain. This predates Lowry's reading of Buckley.
102.9 an A.B.'s ticket.
An A.B. is an able bodied Seaman, that is, one whose service record and demonstrable skills have raised him above the ordinary seaman. Although the rank of A.B. is so documented on a seaman's card, Hugh's use of ‘ticket’ is unusual, since that implies the certificate of an officer, or even master. It would not automatically qualify him to act as a quartermaster, whose duties involve steering, signalling and the keeping of logs.
102.10 Galveston .... Vera Cruz .... Havana ... Nassau ... the West Indies ... Sao Paulo .... Trinidad.
Having missed getting a berth in Galveston, the deep-water port of southern Texas near Houston, Hugh anticipates leaving Vera Cruz, Mexico's major gulf port, and travelling to Havana, the capital of Cuba and a major deep-water port; then on to Nassau, capital of the Bahamas; and from there south past the West Indies to Venezuela, calling by Trinidad, the southernmost and largest of the Lesser Antilles; and from there perhaps going as far south as São Paulo (not a port), in southeast Brazil. The "real fun" he anticipates coming out of Trinidad may be a reference to the islands volatile racial situation, but it is probably just a pun on the word "Trinity" (unless, as seems horridly possible, Lowry intends a very private allusion to Charles Fort's Wild Talents [931], which mentions an epidemic of insidious hydrophobia, "caused by mad vampire bats", as taking place in Trinidad).
103.1 the S.S. Noemijolea.
The British ship, the Noemi-Julia, which was registered with the Republican Agency in England to deliver merchandise to several ports in the Republican zone. Between July 1936 and February 1939 she engaged in transferring weapons and ammunition between Marseilles and Spain, often coming under heavy Nationalist attack (on 23 August 1937 she was bombed by Nationalist aeroplanes but managed to reach Barcelona). Lowry notes [UBC WT 1-11, 3]: "August 24. 1937. London steamer Noemiejulea carrying phosphate from Tunis to Barcelona, bombed 20 miles off Spanish coast." In the margin is noted "Hugh". As Asals says ['Spanish Civil War', 22], Lowry’s source is Buckley [330]. He also noted [UBC WT 1-11, 1]: "a ship loaded with tnt to Vallcarca, south near Barcelona on the rocky Garraf coast". Lowry copied the names correctly; later errors are his own.
The S.S. Noemijolea is ostensibly bound for Freetown, Sierra Leone, her declared cargo of antimony and coffee concealing her true purpose, of bringing munitions to the Loyalist forces in Spain (who were indeed hard-pressed and almost on the point of final surrender). Many of the arms bought in the United States were carried in this kind of devious way to avoid flagrant breaches of official policies of non-intervention, and after the French had closed the frontier [see #102.8], access by sea was the most practical way. Hugh's voyage was probably suggested by that of the unfortunate Mar Cantábrico [see #300.2], which was captured in Franco's blockade, and to that extent his chances seem grim.
The Noemijolea is to proceed to Tzucox, that mysterious port on the Yucatán coast [see #3.5(c); this second allusion was a very late addition to the manuscripts, pencilled in on UBC 29-13, 12]; "oddly enough" affirms the esoteric element (‘Coxcox’) in Tzucox [see #86.4]. Thereafter she will sail from the Caribbean to the Atlantic via the Windward (separating Cuba from Haiti) and Crooked Passages (a deep channel in the Bahamas). Her first landfall on the east side of the Atlantic will be the Madeira Islands, a volcanic archipelago belonging to Portugal, some six hundred miles south of Spain; then, avoiding Port Lyautey in the Rabat area of northwest Morocco (a Nationalist stronghold), she will pass through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. The Capes de Gata, de Palos, and de la Não are the three most conspicuous promontories of the Spanish mainland on the port side as the ship proceeds northwards past the Pityusa Isles (Iviza and Formentara, both held by the Nationalists), along the Gulf of Valencia, past the town of San Carlos de la Rapita on the delta of the Ebro River, and along the rocky Costa de Garraf, southwest of Barcelona (an area which affords few natural harbours). Her cargo will be discharged while still at sea near Vallcarca (the Penguin spelling is wrong), part of the municipality of Sitges on the Garraf coast some twenty miles south of Barcelona (which was by November 1938 one of the last strongholds of Republican resistance).
As part of the policy of non-intervention, Britain, France, Germany and Italy agreed in January 1938 to initiate a blockade of Spanish waters, and patrols became effective from April 1937. The blockade was not directed in principle on behalf of the Nationalists, but as the Republicans were most in need of food and arms Franco was determined to make it effective, and there were a number of incidents in which Nationalist gunboats forcibly took over or fired upon ships trying to run the blockade.
Buckley comments [305]: "The Franco blockade along the coast was very tight." He is critical of the French for refusing to let arms be landed at Bordeaux and sent by land. Lowry's notes [UBC WT 1-1 1, 2] read cynically:
This was one occasion when the Democrats really did cooperate; namely on the necessity for not allowing Republican Spain to purchase war material. Naturally, their ban affected General Franco too. And it was, of course, just coincidence that he had no money & no particular interest either in the purchase of arms from Britain, the United States & France. He was getting all he needed without difficulty from Italy and Germany. Can one wonder that there was happiness & merriment in Berlin and Rome? That was equivalent of giving the Fascist powers carte blanche in Spain.
103.3 Potato Firmin or Columbus in reverse.
Since huge profits could be made by ship-owners willing to run the blockade, many were prepared to take the risk, but the British blockade of the northern Spanish coast and its rather dubious standing in both international law of the sea and public opinion made attempts to bring supplies to the Republicans a complex issue. As Thomas notes [622], merchantmen, their cargoes paid for and rotting, became impatient:
Three vessels, all commanded by Welsh captains named Jones (therefore differentiated from their cargoes as "Potato Jones," "Corn Cob Jones," and "Ham and Eggs Jones"), gained notoriety by pretended attempts to set out from port. "Potato Jones," whose potatoes concealed weapons and whose motives were material, gained a sudden, if unmerited reputation, from a series of breezy answers to a reporter of the Evening News, as a rough salt in the Conradian tradition.
Buckley adds [384] that the ship of ‘Potato’ Jones, the Dellwyn, was later sunk with its cargo of coal off Gandia.
Hugh imagines himself at the wheel of the Noemijolea like Potato Jones of the Marie Llewellyn running the blockade and, like Jones, possibly being turned back (Jones eventually delivered his cargo in Valencia). The reference to Columbus, who sailed the other way from Palos, suggests Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone around the World (1900), [Ch. 5]: "Columbus, in the Santa Maria, sailing these seas more than four hundred years before, was not so happy as I, nor so sure of success in what he had undertaken."
104.1 the lee scuppers ... the forecastle head ... one bell ... white to blue.
Nautical terminology:
(a) lee scuppers: vents, in the side of the ship, on the lee or downwind side, to drain waters from the deck.
(b) chipping a winch: removing old paint from the winch used for hauling up the anchor or hoisting cargo.
(c) the forecastle heads: pronounced fo'c'sle’, the forecastle is the forward part of a ship, traditionally the location of the sailors' quarters; so called from the foremost of the two castle-like structures set on the decks of medieval vessels to command enemy decks. Being raised and forward, the head or upper portion of the forecastle is a usual place for a look-out.
(d) one bell: bells are struck at half-hour intervals to mark the passage of the watches on spells of duty; one bell signals the end of the first half hour of a new watch, eight bells the end of the watch. Thus, the one bell here means either 8:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. or 4:30 p.m.
(e) white to blue. The change from white to blue uniform, here signifying a change from summer to winter, also indicates the transition from "foreign" to "home" waters. The choice of colours goes back to George II (who admired them on a mistress), but white uniform for the tropics became regulation only in 1885.
104.2 there ain't no brigade no mo'.
Hugh casually adopts the lilt of the Negro spiritual, 'I ain't gonna dream my Lord no mo'’:
Oh, you cain't get to heaven on roller skates
Cause you'll roll right past dem pearly gates,
I ain't gonna dream my Lord no mo'.
The dream which was once embodied in the International Brigades has been shattered by their forced withdrawal a few weeks earlier [see #102.6].
104.3 the Western Ocean.
Since the time of Plato, a traditional name for the Atlantic Ocean beyond the pillars of Hercules.
104.4 the paths of glory lead but to the grave.
From 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1750), by Thomas Gray (1716-71); a melancholy reflection upon thoughts called up in the poet's mind as he looks at the graves of those whose humble lot was so different from that of the great, but whose final fate is identical [lines 33-36]:
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
104.5 Horses.
Jan Gabrial confirms [Inside the Volcano, 114] that the horses were rented from the Casino de la Selva [see #3.7], but Hugh and Yvonne are not near the hotel; hence the explanation, "they put them out there to pasture or something" (the last two words as Lowry's characteristic mode of raising a cloud of dust when covering his tracks).
104.6 his full mental height of six feet two (he was five feet eleven).
Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim begins with a description of Jim: "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet." Both Jim and Hugh fall that slight bit short of heroic stature (according to tradition, Christ alone was exactly six feet tall).
Cuernavaca's growth has swallowed up areas of open countryside such as those described here, and if there was a model farm in Acapantzingo (as seems likely), all traces have long disappeared. The agrarian reforms initiated in Cárdenas's presidency [see #107.4] included provisions for the establishment of agricultural colleges and model farms on which workers from the ejidos could learn the skills to benefit their communities. For Yvonne, the farm remains as a model of what could be possible on Geoffrey's island in British Columbia: "A real farm, you know, with cows and pigs and chickens – and a red barn and silos and fields of corn and wheat" [118]. However, the idyllic picture of the dairy, and the sweet smell of milk and vanilla, is immediately ruined by the unwitting images of cuckoldry in Hugh's references to Texas longhorns, stags and greater kudus.
104.8 you've got your cattle again, I see.
In a letter to Albert Erskine [UBC 2-6], Lowry admitted to a "technical echo of something in Faulkner's Wild Palms. I think, in a similar bracket, 'There's your horse again, she said’, or something.” The "technical echo" refers to Wilbourne telling McCord of "the precipice, the dark precipice" of love and solitude, to which you ride "the old familiar well-broken nag, up to the precipice – 'There's the damned horse', McCord said. 'I've been waiting for it.'"
105.1 the Paseo de la Reforma ... the statue of Pasteur.
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The Paseo de la Reforma, in Mexico City, runs from the western limits of the city, through the fashionable Lomas district and Chapultepec Park, into the heart of town. Although the street was designed and built for Maximilian as a royal carriageway, it was later named for the Reform Movement led by Juárez in the 1850s. The street is lined with statues; that of Pasteur is located at Reforma and Insurgentes (near Paris), one of the busiest intersections in the city. It commemorates Louis Pasteur (1822-95), the French chemist whose research into fermentation and infectious disease led to the science of immunology (Hugh has leapt from the model dairy farm to the statue by way of ‘pasteurization’). The statue was donated by the French community of Mexico City to commemorate the centenary of Mexican independence, 1810-1910.
105.2 Muy incorrecto.
Yvonne is criticising her slacks (Mexican women would not be dressed thus), but the entire situation is problematical.
105.3 an affectionate scrubbed woolly white dog.
As Hugh reflects [106], this dog is very different from "those dreadful creatures that seemed to shadow his brother everywhere." The dog, trained to detect snakes, is part of the earthly paradise through which Hugh and Yvonne will soon be riding, an innocent and idyllic landscape which, despite the ominous shadow of the Alcapancingo Prison, is a reminder of what has been lost.
105.4 the high prison walls.
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The State Penitentiary of Morelos was in 1938 fairly recent (the old prison had been in the Cortés Palace); it is an ominous looking building on the Atlacomulco Road, surrounded by barbed wire and high towers that would be visible from the Consul's house on the other side of the ravine. Jan Gabrial tells [Inside the Volcano, 153-56] of a visit she and Malcolm made with their servant, Josefina, to visit Don Pablo, their wayward gardener.
105.5 Juan Cerillo.
Hugh's Mexican friend who has been with him in Spain. His close resemblance to the dying Indian [243], and the value Hugh places upon such a friendship, underlines the compañero theme [see #247.2], but Juan Cerillo's rather shadowy existence scarcely makes him into a figure of sufficient magnitude to set against the Consul. Juan Cerillo is based upon Lowry's close friendship with a Zapotecan Indian, named in Dark as the Grave as Juan Fernando Martinez (in real life, Juan Fernando Márquez, and in Lowry's essay 'Garden of Etla', Fernando Atonalzin, who came to represent for Lowry an ideal of manhood, exemplifying in his personal life "la vida impersonal" which Lowry found so attractive [see #12.1].
That is, sidesaddle; the kind of ladylike riding position that one might see in city parks.
106.2 Guapa .... Ah, muy hermosa.
Sp. "Dashing .... Ah, very pretty."
106.3 Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wheeee-u.
Juan Cerillo, from whom Hugh has learnt to whistle, is a Zapotecan Indian from the highlands of Oaxaca, and the Zapotecans of the Sierra, like some Canary Islanders, have a whistling language known as ‘chiflío’ which enables them to communicate over great distances. This detail was present before Juan Cerillo had entered the composition.
106.4 the dying fall.
From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night [I.i.1-8], when the love-sick Orsino speaks of the pangs of unrequited love:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again; it had a dying fall;
O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. Enough! no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
The words are used in T.S. Eliot's 'Prufrock', and in his 'Portrait of a Lady', but Lowry probably has in mind Conrad Aiken's "the dying fall of a ukelele" [Blue Voyage, 28].
106.5 two fierce cornucopias.
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From L. cornu copiae, "horn of plenty"; in classical mythology the horn of the goat that suckled Zeus; hence, a horn overflowing with abundant fruits, flowers, and grains. Here, following the implied reference to "the food of love", the horns of the cabrón are an ever-present reminder of how the horn of plenty was undone.
106.6 a Machiavellian eye.
A look of calculated malevolence. From Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Florentine diplomat and political theorist, whose famous book Il Principe (The Prince), which argued that for the establishment and maintenance of authority expediency was more important than morality, gained him a not altogether warranted reputation of one who believed that the ends justify the means.
107.1 allowed for one hour a glimpse of what never was.
A suggestion of the earthly paradise [see #10.4]: a lingering memory of the innocence that cannot be regained since "brotherhood was betrayed" by Hugh's earlier affair with Yvonne.
107.2 Hugh pictured Juan Cerillo distinctly now, tall.
Zapotecan Indians are rarely taller than 5'6". Juan Cerillo is raised literally as well as figuratively above his fellows; Hugh [104] is some inches below "his full mental height of six feet two".
107.3 the generous help Mexico had actually given.
The Mexican government sent some two million dollars worth of military aid to the Republicans in Spain, and was the only Western nation to officially declare itself in support of the Loyalists, to send arms and supplies to Spain, and to welcome Republican refugees when the fighting was over. There was no Mexican battalion among the International Brigades, but a number of Mexican liberals and socialists fought in Spain the way that Juan Cerillo is here described as having done.
Mexico historically had been a land of huge haciendas, or estates, which had combined land monopoly by the few with blatant exploitation of the landless many. Over the centuries, the haciendas frequently had encroached upon or swallowed up the ejidos, or communal lands, of the villages. One aim of the Mexican revolution (1910-20) had been agrarian reform, which had been embodied in Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, but in a rather loose manner, so that in the years before the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-40) token efforts only had been made at redistributing hacienda land to communities and in regulating and financing the ejidos. Under Cárdenas, the process was speeded up and extended considerably: in all, some fifty million acres were reallocated to the villages and to those who actually worked the land.
The principle behind the ejido was socialistic (hence the often direct action taken by opposing right-wing groups): the lands were to be held and worked in common, with economic and social control in the hands of ejido administrative committees elected by the ejidatarios themselves. The programme could not have been successfully instituted without the National Bank of Ejidal Credit, which was created by Cárdenas expressly for the purpose of financing loans to enable communities to become self-sufficient and to improve the quality of such things as crops, seeds, fruit trees, farm machinery, water supplies, power, housing, and education. Loans were made to some 3,500 ejidos with minimal security (money being advanced on the basis of crop expectations). There were naturally many economic failures, since the success of the venture depended upon the sound functioning of the ejidos, and as well as problems of organisation, there was often resistance from suspicious peons as well as from local authorities who saw their power being eroded. Overall, the project was a huge success. Farm income and production rose measurably, and the quality of life improved greatly, but above all material improvements was "the change in the people's psychology from servility to independent worker" [Ashby, 176]. Hugh's admiration for Juan Cerillo and his dissatisfaction with himself stem largely from the other's having engaged himself totally with a "human cause" of demonstrable worth, while he fritters away his talents on a doomed enterprise.
In a marginal note [UBC WT 1-9, B] Lowry admitted that the Ejidal information was "scarcely distilled" from Ralph Bates, The Fields of Paradise (1941). He also took notes from Gunther's Inside Latin America (1941), recording erroneously that "Ejido means exit or way out" [UBC WT 1-21]. This theme, and Juan Cerillo, were late revisions (1943-44).
107.5 Zapotecan.
An Indian tribe whose descendants are located in the state of Oaxaca and on the isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Zapotecan civilisation reached its height in the fifteenth century, before being subjugated by the Aztecs.
Sp. "Long live Christ the King"; the rallying cry of the pro-church revolutionary forces who had opposed attempts by the state government to subordinate church to state during the nineteenth century; specifically, the cry of the Cristeros, a militant Catholic guerrilla force centred in Jalisco but also active further south (there were three bands in Morelos, where there was no serious sympathy for the movement). Their rebellion was mainly in support of the church's strike in protest of the enforcement of anti-clerical articles in the constitution, but the activities of some of the bands continued long after that strike was resolved and into the Cárdenas era. Between 1926 and 1929 they attacked many government-run schools and institutions, killing a schoolteacher for every priest shot by the socialists. Their most notorious attack took place on 20 April 1927 when a train was attacked, captured, and set afire with its passengers still on board. Over one hundred men, women, and children died in the blaze. Rumours spread that some of the attackers were dressed in the garb of Catholic priests; the government responded by banishing the highest members of the church hierarchy and forbidding church services. By the end of the month the country was without either priests or services. Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory gives one account of this bizarre period in Mexican history.
Lázaro Cárdenas (1895-1970), President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940, who introduced some of the most important legislation in modern Mexican history. He came to the presidency via the military, but unlike his immediate predecessors refused to be the puppet of strongman Plutarco Elías Calles, who had dominated the previous decade. Instead, Cárdenas removed Calles's supporters from privileged posts and inaugurated a new regime based on socialistic principles of reform. He reorganised the railways, nationalised Mexico's oil wealth [see #30.1], initiated wide-ranging agrarian reforms [see #107.4], and did much to strengthen the labour movement, making it clear that the policy of his administration would be to support organised labour in its efforts to improve the living conditions of the Mexican masses [Ashby, 273]. His presidency gave Mexico and Mexicans a new self-respect both at home and abroad, but by his opposition to clerical privilege and the entrenched rights of landowners he also created many enemies.
107.8 the stamps showed archers shooting at the sun.
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The 10¢ violet of 1934 (Express Delivery), commemorating Cárdenas's assumption of office (though the 10¢ violet of 1938 is just possible). The stamp depicts an Indian archer shooting upwards, possibly Moctezuma Ilhuicamina, Aztec emperor, 1446-68, whose name means "Angry Lord Who Shoots the Sky". There may be an impenetrable mystical significance behind this message. Frater Achad's QBL [111] comments: "Stamped with an archer: Q.B.L." (Q.B.L. being the Hebrew root ‘to receive’); and in the Appendix [34] is a further obscure reference: "For had the ARROW = Sagittarius (Ruled by Jupiter) been put on the plane of Jupiter, and the Spirit, Shin, been included in the CENTRE of the TRIAD we should have obtained ... UNITY." The comment, "Stamped with an archer: QBL", appears on the Texas Manuscript of UTV [Ch. IV, 18].
108.1 Cuicatlán.
A town in the north of Oaxaca state, in the Sierra some thirty miles northeast of Nochixtlán; a centre of considerable activity in the Revolution. Lowry's friend, Juan Fernando Márquez, had been transferred there from Oaxaca.
Benito Juárez (1806-72), president of Mexico, 1857-63 and 1867-72, his terms of office interrupted by the French intervention of 1864-67 which set the ill-fated Maximilian on the throne. A Zapotec lndian from the state of Oaxaca, Juárez was orphaned at three and set to work as a shepherd boy, but he was rescued by Don Antonio Salaneuva, a Franciscan priest who saw the boy's potential and taught him to read and write (Juárez did not speak Spanish until he was thirteen). Initially trained for the priesthood, Juárez was to become its bitterest foe; after dropping out of the seminary, he worked and educated himself to become a lawyer, then turned to politics to implement his liberal ideals. As president, he relentlessly opposed the conservative policies of the church and, after winning the War of the Reform (1858-61), he initiated a far-reaching series of industrial, legal, and educational reforms that set Mexico well on the way towards economic recovery (the Ley Juárez, abolishing entrenched privilege, has been the basis in principle of most subsequent reforms). Hugh's respect for Juan Cerillo is similar to that most Mexicans have for Juárez, commonly considered the greatest Mexican president, and the rough similarity between the backgrounds and ideals of the two Zapotecans suggests that the parallel is intended.
108.3 the Yaquis, the Papagos, the Tomasachics.
Indian tribes of northern Mexico, whose treatment by the Mexican government indeed constitutes a sorry record and whose numbers have declined drastically:
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(a) the Yaquis. An Indian tribe of the Sonora desertlands, feared in Aztec times as vicious fighters. Their numbers in 1903 were calculated at only twenty thousand after uprisings in the late nineteenth century led to wholesale deportations to the Yucatán as a means of eliminating the troubles permanently. The horrors of the deportations and enforced slavery are described at length in John Kenneth Turner's Barbarous Mexico, a book that Lowry has used often. Chapter 2, entitled 'The Extermination of the Yaquis', tells how the Yaquis were goaded into war to fight for their lands, of the mass killings and brutalities against the tribe, and of the "final solution" of the Yucatan slave camps and the henequen plantations.
(b) the Papagos. A once important tribe of Sonora and Arizona, now confined to a small area at the top of the Gulf of California, their best lands and waters having been expropriated for European haciendas. Their numbers were fewer than five thousand at the turn of the century. As Turner notes [127]: "In like manner have the Mayos of Sonora, the Papagos, the Tomosachics –in fact, practically all the native peoples of Mexico – been reduced to peonage, if not to slavery."
(c) the Tomasachics. Despite the above, the Tomosachics were not a tribe but rather the natives of the village of Tomosachic in Chihuahua. Turner notes [130-31] that following the refusal by the villagers to hand over the paintings of their church to General Lauro Carrillo, an exorbitant tax was levied upon the town, and when the Indians could not pay it Carrillo took hostages and then attacked, massacring between eight hundred and two thousand Indians.
108.4 the terrible Valle Nacional.
The details of Juan Cerillo's life are drawn directly from Turner's Barbarous Mexico [64-68]. Turner describes Valle Nacional [67], as:
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a deep gorge from two to five miles wide and twenty miles long tucked away among almost impassible mountains in the extreme northwestern corner of the state of Oaxaca. Its mouth is fifty miles up the Papaloapan river from El Hule, the nearest railway station, yet it is through El Hule that every human being passes in going to or coming from the Valley.
That is, the valley forms a natural prison, and in the early years of the century it was used as such. Turner states categorically [67] that "Valle Nacional is undoubtedly the worst slave hole in Mexico. Probably it is the worst in the world." Theoretically, it was a plantation centre where peons were employed on a contract labour basis; in practice it was a brutal slave camp, based upon kidnapping, child labour, and ruthless exploitation. Ninety-five per cent of those taken there died in seven months, some fifteen thousand per year – a figure Turner would have found unbelievable had he not been told so by the masters themselves. In a passage directly used by Lowry, Turner comments [81]:
The Valle Nacional slave holder has discovered that it is cheaper to buy a slave for $45 [pesos] and work and starve him to death in seven months, and then spend $45 for a fresh slave, than it is to give the first slave better food, work him less sorely and stretch out his life and his toiling hours over a longer period of time.
Porfirio Díaz (1830-1915), President of Mexico, 1877-80 and 1884-1911. An Indian from Oaxaca, he distinguished himself fighting against the French, 1864-67, and assumed the presidency by overthrowing Lerdo in 1867. For the next thirty-four years he controlled Mexico, bringing it forcibly into the modern world by inviting industrialization and overseas investment. He gave Mexico law and order, political stability, and, for the first time since independence, a solvent economy. Railways and roads were built, drainage and sewerage schemes initiated, and oil fields brought into production. Yet the name of Díaz is widely detested because progress was made at such cost to humanity: corruption and bribery throughout the civil service, exploitation of Mexican resources by foreign powers, no freedom of the press, virtual slavery of the uneducated, and extravagant displays of luxury among the rich. The gap between rich and poor had never been wider, and because the costs of modernisation had been so great and had caused such wide-spread discontent, the seeds of insurrection were sown, culminating in the bloody Revolution of 1910-20.
A rural police force established under Juarez before the French intervention, 1864-67, when they played a major peacekeeping role. Under Díaz, the corps was strengthened considerably, and in addition to its original patrolling function it was used to guard ore shipments, escort prisoners, support local police forces and enforce unpopular court decisions. Turner notes that rurales were used to transport and guard slaves in the Valle Nacional [Barbarous Mexico, 59]. Because of their cruelty and ruthless excesses, the rurales were feared and detested by villagers who saw their activities as a form of legalised brigandage. The offshoots of that system are still present in the novel: with regular police on strike, the real power is in the hands of such vigilantes as those who turn up later [247].
Turner [148] describes the rurales as
mounted police usually selected from the criminal class, well-equipped and comparatively well-paid, whose energies have been turned to robbery and killing for the government. There are federal rurales and state rurales, the total of the two running somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000. They are divided among the various states in about equal proportions to the population, but are utilized in most of the rural districts. The rurales are the special rough riders of the jefes politicos and they are given almost unlimited powers to kill at their discretion.
Sp. "political bosses," most of whom, under Díaz, were military men given civic offices in return for services rendered. Turner comments [72-73]:
A jefe político is a civil officer who rules political districts corresponding to our counties. He is appointed by the president or by the governor of his state and is also mayor, or presidente, of the principal town or city in his district. In turn he usually appoints the mayors of the towns under him, as well as all other officers of importance. He has no one to answer to except his governor – unless the national president feels like interfering – and altogether is quite a little Czar in his domain.
The appointment system encouraged graft and corruption and a capricious administration of justice, but the system of dependent loyalty among the jefes politicos was the basis of Díaz's firmly entrenched position.
108.8 the extirpation of liberal political institutions ... an engine of massacre, an instrument of exile.
Barbarous Mexico reads [108]: "The extirpation of political movements". Turner states [143]: "As an instrument of repression, the Mexican army is employed effectively in two separate and distinct ways. It is an engine of massacre and an exile institution, a jailhouse, a concentration camp for the politically undesirable."
108.9 Huerta.
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Victoriano Huerta (1854-1916), President, 1913-14 [see #44.6]. Although Huerta ousted Francisco Madero from power, his authority was resisted in the provinces, and he failed to pacify the country. One troubled area had been the state of Morelos, where Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919) had earlier linked himself with Madero's cause and raised an insurgent army which scored some victories over the federal troops. When relations between Madero and Zapata soured because of Madero's unwillingness to accede immediately to Zapata's call for land reform, the Zapatistas promulgated their Plan de Ayala calling for immediate agrarian and social reform, and armed revolution spread widely through the neighbouring states. After Huerta had taken over from Madero, Zapata angrily rejected Huerta's call for solidarity and scored impressive victories against the federal troops, but when Venustiano Carranza assumed office in March 1917, thousands of federal troops were sent into Morelos, and in some of the bloodiest fighting in the entire civil war, the Zapatistas were beaten back. With Zapata's betrayal and assassination on 10 April 1919 the Morelos insurrection more or less came to an end. Juan Cerillo has almost certainly been fighting with Zapata, whose views on social and land reform were similar to his own, and although the incident of his killing his father seems rather ineptly contrived by Lowry, it epitomises the sordid conflicts of honour and idealism that characterised this period.
108.10 must ceaselessly struggle upwards.
An echo of the citation from Goethe's Faust placed at the beginning of the novel: "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen." The positive values implicit in this epigraph and embodied in the person of Juan Cerillo (and to a lesser degree in Hugh) are set in deliberate opposition to the Consul's downward fall.
108.11 What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn?
From the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius [Bk. 11.17]:
Of man's life, his time is a point, his existence a flux, his sensation clouded, his body's entire composition corruptible, his vital spirit an eddy of breath, his fortune hard to predict, his fame uncertain. Briefly, all things of the body, a river; all things of the spirit, dream and delirium; his life a warfare and a sojourn in a strange land, his after-fame oblivion.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD), Roman emperor 161-180, twelve books in Greek, express the stoic ideal and argue that man's duty is to obey the divine law that resides in his reason, to be superior to pains and pleasures, forgive injuries, regard all men as brothers, and await death with equanimity. The consolation for man's sojourn in a strange land, his only companion, is philosophy. Not an orthodox Communist, Lowry yet believed that Communism was, in the terms advanced by Marcus Aurelius, the Christianity of his age, by which he meant not that it was true but that it would prevail [see #305.1].
108.12 the tierra Caliente of each human soul.
The tierra caliente (Sp. "hot land") is the broad lowland tract along the gulf coast of Mexico associated with high temperatures and malarial fevers [Prescott, I.i, 10], but the phrase seems to be used here as equivalent to the volcano within each individual.
108.13 No peace but that must pay full toll to hell.
A line used twice in Lowry’s poetry, in ‘Warning from False Cape Horn’ [CP, #163] and in ‘The Canadian Turned Back at the Border’ [CP #167]. It seems to be an echo of James Thompson’s ‘The City of Dreadful Night’:
He snarled, What thing is this that apes a soul,
And would find entrance to our gulf of dole,
Without the payment of the settled toll?
109.1 with the divine surety of a Cristoferus.
St Christopher, patron saint of travellers, was a man of gigantic stature who wished to serve the mightiest of masters and sought Christ. He lived alone by a ford where many travellers passed, and one night when he was carrying a child across the river his burden became so heavy that he could barely get across. The child then told Christopher ("bearer of Christ") that he had been carrying the weight of the whole world and revealed himself as the Christ. A St Christopher's medal (or "Christoferus") is often worn by travellers.
109.2 immelmaning.
An Immelman turn, named after Max Immelman, German air ace of World War I, is a manoeuvre in which an aeroplane half-loops to an inside-down position, then half-rolls back to a normal upright flight. It was used by Immelman and other ace fighters to gain altitude and take following planes unexpectedly from behind.
A cantina which sells pulque, the fermented beer-like drink made from the aguamiel or juice of the maguey cactus. Its taste has been variously described as like a sweet and foaming mead or a stale, sweaty sock. Pulque is manufactured and drunk almost exclusively in the Central Highland area of Mexico from Guadalajara to Oaxaca since the Pulque maguey does not thrive outside this area and since the complex fermentation process complicates wider distribution. Pulque (Nah. octli Poliuhqui, from octli, "wine", and poliuhqui, "decomposed"; misunderstood and simplified by the Spaniards to pulque) was the only alcoholic drink known to the Aztecs, who imposed rigorous strictures against drunkenness but also used it in religious rites (this accentuates Geoffrey's sense of his drinking as an abuse of his mystic powers). Lowry points out that "Revelations such as that Pulqueria, which is a kind of Mexican pub, is also the name of Raskolnikov's mother should doubtless not be taken too seriously" ['LJC', 82]; meaning, no doubt, that one should be at least aware of the suggestion of crime and punishment.
109.4 La Sepultura.
Sp. "the Sepulchre": the underlying association of drinking and death is reinforced by the presence of the horse with number 7 on its rump, the advertisement for Las Manos de Orlac [see #24.4], and the quixotic windmill on the roof [see #248.1]. Compare Matthew 23:27: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." The pulquería was originally named [UBC 29-13, 12], in drunken Spanish, ‘Los Muerte de las Dolorosas’ ("The Death of Sorrows"), but the "humorous connotation" of the name La Sepultura is, perhaps, the reference in Turner's Barbarous Mexico [98-99] to the Valle Nacional slave farm of that name.
109.5 your horse doesn't want to drink, Yvonne.
Hugh's words, repeated [110], are an example of Lowry's deft use of the cliché: the proverbial expression "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink" has ironic reference to the Consul, who [71] had flexed his muscles and announced, "Still strong as a horse, so to speak, strong as a horse!" (a phrase repeated by Hugh [122]). That Yvonne senses the aptness of the cliché is perhaps revealed by her ironic little smile and by her secret amusement [261] when she recalls the incident.
110.1 Cimarron.
A 1931 western, produced by William Le Baron and directed by Wesley Ruggles, starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, based on the novel by Edna Ferber about the opening of the Cimarron Strip in Oklahoma. The most celebrated western of the early sound era, earning two million dollars and three Academy Awards, it is the sweeping saga of Sabra, a young Kansas girl who weds a wandering poet and gunfighter named Yancey Cravat and moves to Oklahoma during the land rush of 1889. She is deserted by her husband and left to manage the newspaper office they have established. Years later, in 1911, they meet again; she is now a distinguished congresswoman, and he a dying nobody.
110.2 Gold Diggers of 1930.
More correctly, Gold Diggers of 1933, a remake of the 1929 musical, Gold Diggers of Broadway, based on Avery Hopwood's play The Gold Diggers about a group of chorus girls in search of rich husbands. There were others in the series (Gold Diggers of 1935 .... 1937 .... in Paris), "their lethargic plots being more or less compensated for by Busby Berkeley's kaleidoscopic dance ensembles" [Halliwell, 298].
110.3 Come to Sunny Andalusia.
Particularly ironic in the context of the Spanish Civil War: Andalusia, which embraces eight provinces of the south and southeast of Spain, is renowned for its glorious sunshine and resort towns, but it was the scene of heavy fighting during the early part of the war when most of the area fell to the Nationalists. Compare the "Come to sunny Spain" poster put up in the university library, Madrid, as described in John Sommerfield's Volunteer in Spain [150-51]: at the end of the afternoon, there was an appalling crash and the room was thick with dust and smoke, a hole appearing where the "sunny Spain" poster had been.
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110.4 the Peter Lorre movie.
Las Manos de Orlac ("The Hands of Orlac"), currently showing at the cinema [see #24.4].
110.5 convolvulus.
This is the serpentine plant mentioned earlier[98], "a flower-bed that was completely, grossly strangled by a coarse green vine". The convolvulacae, from L. "to entwine", are a troublesome weed ("bindweed") abundant in the tropics. Margaret Armstrong's Field Book of Western Wild Flowers, which Lowry owned, offers other names, such as "Love-vine" and "Strangle-weed". Hugh seems unaware of any connotations.
111.1 Judas ... that Madrugada ... thirty pieces of silver.
The Spanish word ‘madrugada’ simply means "dawn"; but Hugh is using it in the sense "the hour before dawn, the last hours of the condemned" [DATG, 172]; in the Spanish Civil War the word was invariably associated with the shooting of prisoners of war at dawn. Here the reference is to the first Good Friday in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver and then hanged himself; Hugh imagines his feelings of guilt for having betrayed Geoffrey are very similar. Although Lowry claimed that "Any resemblance is purely coincidental" [Woodcock, 112], he may have got the idea for this passage from Dorothy Wellesley's 'The Morning After', which concludes:
Judas Iscariot, sun half arisen,
Went out in the gloom.
Beautiful Judas Tree,
April in bloom.
111.2 what is that to us, see thou to that.
From Matthew 27:3-5, where Judas returns to the chief priests and elders ("the bastardos") repenting too late:
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders.
Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
111.3 the future-corruptive serpent.
In an obvious sense, a reference to the serpent of the Garden of Eden, whose presence prefigured the corruption and fall of man; here, the temptation Hugh feels to re-enact his previous betrayal of Geoffrey with Yvonne (whose very name suggests Eve); in a wider sense, man's capacity to corrupt his future by almost willfully choosing the path which leads to his own destruction. In Chapter V, the Consul sees a little snake and thinks it is a twig (his mistake anticipating his later reference to Hugh as a snake in the grass).
111.4 Be Mexico.
Mexico is summed up, in Hugh's mind, by the national emblem depicting the eagle whose talons grasp the serpent [see #44.8]. The infernal paradise of Mexico, Lowry thought, was ideally suited to the "drama of man's struggle between the powers of darkness and light"; it is "a kind of timeless symbol of the world on which we can place the Garden of Eden" ['LJC', 67]. Hugh's struggle is to resist the temptation represented by the serpent, the urge to betray his brother with Yvonne.
111.5 Have you not passed through the river?
Most obviously, the river of Lethe, whose waters were drunk by departing spirits that they might forget their past. However, the comment, “be dead”, is aligned with “Be Mexico” by the recognition of the Mexican cult of death.
111.6 a Gila monster.
From Gila, a river in Arizona: a stout sluggish poisonous lizard with a short stumpy tail and a body covered with beadlike scales arranged in rings of black and orange found in the desert regions of the southwestern USA and Mexico.
112.1 what might have been a French château.
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The Cervecería Quauhnahuac, like the prison, is on lands that were once part of the estate of Maximilian and Carlota and which, had fate decreed otherwise, "might have been" still part of that lost Eden. It is likely that Lowry intends a punning allusion to the Château d'If, off the coast of Marseilles. In Chapter 8 of Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, the prisoner Dantes is brought to the "black and frowning rock" and consigned to the castle dungeons. The Chateau d'If is mentioned twice in Lowry's letters [SL, 15 and 29], and Hugh hears the noise of the brewery [115] as "dungeons: dungeons: dungeons." Asals discusses [Making, 334-35] how this section changed in revision from "a little brewery" to one that looked like a French chateau, the beer becoming "dark" and then "German", and the sound of "dungeons" hinting at not only a ship's furnaces but the infernal regions – but finally dramatised in Hugh's perception.
112.2 mill-wheel-like reflections.
Compare Lowry’s poem, ‘Indian Arm’ [CP, #164], which begins: “Mill-wheel reflections of sun on water”; this links the setting to the Consul’s vision of a northern paradise [37].
113.1 an ostiole.
More correctly an ostiolo, from L. ostiolum, "a little hole"; hence, simply, a hole or opening into the brewery through its wall.
113.2 some engine of destruction.
The armadillo (of the order Edentata), is a lower order of mammal, but it is not, despite its armour and reptilian aspect, an evolutionary anachronism. Lowry's concern here is to make a general comparison between his infernal machine [see #209.1] and the entire process of evolution, which after countless eons of struggle, mutation and survival seems to have culminated in this machine-like animal.
113.3 General Winfield Scott ... the ravines of the Cerro Gordo.
Winfield Scott (1786-1866) was the American general and leader of the U.S. Army of Occupation in the Spanish-American war of 1847, which confirmed the United States title to Texas and cost Mexico huge Californian and New Mexican territories. Scott was a bold fighter and daring strategist, but his attack on Vera Cruz, 9 March 1847, took the lives of innocent civilians, and his name is despised in Mexico (this deflates Hugh's posturing a little). The Cerro Gordo is a mountain pass between Jalapa and Vera Cruz where Mexican troops under Santa Anna were firmly entrenched to halt Scott's advance to the capital. Scott noted the possibility of bypassing the Mexicans on the left flank, and while a small force feigned attack from the front the bulk of the Americans fell upon the Mexicans from the rear with devastating results. Larry Clipper has suggested that Hugh may be confusing Scott with another general of the Mexican-American war, Zachary Taylor, who was more likely to have ridden in the distinctive manner described, leg athwart the pommel. Scott ("Old Fuss and Feathers") was an older, fatter general, who could not have adopted such a position in the saddle.
113.4 W. H. Hudson ... found out to his cost.
William Henry Hudson (1841-1922), English naturalist and writer, whose early years in South America left an indelible mark on his life and writing. His works include The Purple Land (1885); British Birds (1895); Green Mansions (1904); Afoot in England (1909); and Far Away and Long Ago (1918). He wrote many pamphlets and monographs on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Birds, and Hyde Park Bird Sanctuary was established in 1925 in his memory. Hugh is referring to Chapter 4 of Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life, where Hudson describes how an armadillo, seeking to escape the fumes which plantation workers were pumping down holes to kill rats, bolted from its earth and began digging vigorously to escape by burying itself in the soil:
Neither men nor dogs had seen him, and I at once determined to capture him unaided by any one and imagined it would prove a very easy task. Accordingly I laid hold of his black bone-cased tail with both hands and began tugging to get him off the ground, but couldn't move him. He went on digging furiously, getting deeper and deeper into the earth, and I soon found that instead of my pulling him out he was pulling me in after him. It hurt my small-boy pride to think that an animal no bigger than a cat was going to beat me in a trial of strength, and this made me hold on more tenaciously than ever and tug and strain more violently, until not to lose him I had to go flat down on the ground. But it was all for nothing: first my hands, then my aching arms were carried down into the earth, and I was forced to release my hold and get up to rid myself of the mould he had been throwing up into my face and all over my head, neck, and shoulders.
As Jakobsen notes [76], "The armadillo's determination to disappear into the ground is as absolute as the Consul's pursuit of self-destruction. If their purposes are crossed, both will pull another person with them."
115.1 Tepalzanco.
Probably Teopanzolco, an area of Cuernavaca near the railway station and the site of an ancient Tlahuican pyramid. The Tomalín bus described here and in Chapter VIII would pass just south of the area, but an alternative route to Cuautla via Tepoztlán would pass to the north of the station and pyramid.
115.2 Parián .... the old capital of the state .... a huge monastery there.
Although Lowry's Parián is fictional, it has the attributes of several recognisable places:
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(a) Chapultepec. In Dark as the Grave [164], Lowry describes a journey to the bull-throwing at Chapultepec, the waterfall that used to be there, and the incident of the dying Indian which was to form the core of UTV the route taken by the Tomalín bus is recognisably that to Chapultepec.
(b) Cuautla. Not only is Cuautla the right kind of distance from Cuernavaca to fit the bus journey undertaken in Chapter VIII, on a continuation of the route beyond Chapultepec, but it was also, from 11 May 1874 until 1 January 1876, the state capital of Morelos [de Davila, 141].
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(c) Amecameca. The town of Amecameca is under the volcanoes and near the state line [see #324.3] in a way that Cuernavaca, Cuautla and Oaxaca are not.
(d) Tepoztlán. An ancient ruined Dominican convent at Tepoztlán may well be in part the origin of that in Parián.
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(e) Oaxaca. In Dark as the Grave [121], Lowry tells of his fears of critics trying to pin down his geography: "They would suppose too that he had got the geography wrong due to his lack of observation, whereas in truth this was because that part of his terrain that was not wholly imaginative was equally based upon the city of Oaxaca and sus anexas." There is in Oaxaca, right beside the state museum and the Church of Santo Domingo, a large ex-monastery, once part of the church, but later (as in Lowry's day) the headquarters for the Oaxaqueñan military forces. In Parián a ruined monastery forms the headquarters for the Unión Militar [339].
115.3 telegraph wires twanged.
A detail anticipated at the outset of In Ballast to the White Sea.
116.1 It was built by you English.
The Mexico City to Cuernavaca line is part of the Mexican Central system, a standard gauge line built by the cheaper American methods rather than by the British. Lowry has in mind the Mexican Southern Railway, 228 miles long, running between Puebla and Oaxaca. It was originally contracted in 1881 to an American firm, but on their failing to meet the demands was reallocated in 1886 to the British firm of Read, Campbell & Co., who, despite an outcry about governmental patronage of foreigners, used British capital and British materials to complete by 1892 an excellent job through country that was an engineering nightmare. Telegraph lines from Mexico to Oaxaca had been put through by 1868, but after the line was built they were replaced with others following the tracks (Lowry's details imply an ominous Dantean contrast of the leftward sweep of the rail-way against the direct route of the telegraph lines). The story about British engineers taking the roundabout route because they were paid by the kilometre is probably apocryphal. Lowry alludes to it again in Dark as the Grave [76] in relation to the Oaxaca line, and in a letter to Conrad Aiken [SL, 18] he tells the same story of the railroad north from Mexico City.
116.2 Punch.
The well-known English satirical magazine, established 1841, which would relish a story of the above kind. The magazine was named from the clownish figure of the Punch and Judy shows, hence the echo of Pierrot [20] and Harlequin [44]. Punch, or Poonch, in Kashmir, is a city and district in Jammu province to the southwest of Srinagar. With a large Moslem population but a tradition of Hindu rule, it has long been a troubled land.
117.1 Dr Guzman.
The name was Gomez in the earliest drafts. Although Guzman is a common enough name in Mexico, Lowry's change designates one of the infamous figures of the conquest – Nuño Beltrán de Guzman, conqueror of New Galicia and founder of Guadalajara, whose treatment of the Indians made his name a byword for cruelty. This may constitute Lowry's private revenge upon the Cuernavaca doctor who had prescribed a like routine for him.
117.2 Papa.
Sp. "Pope" or "potato"; the first instance of Hugh's nickname for Geoffrey, suggesting not only the Consul's role in loco parentis (a role not unlike that of the older Haydn to Mozart, or Aiken to Lowry), but also anticipating the inevitable death of the pope [see #230.2]. Papa was also the name given by some chroniclers, including Díaz, to the Aztec priests.
118.1 Maybe he's a black magician.
Black magic (as opposed to white) is defined in MacGregor Mathers's The Sacred Magic [xxv]:
In Magic, that is to say, the Science of the Control of the Secret forces of Nature, there have always been two great schools, the one great in Good, the other in Evil; the former the Magic of Light, the latter that of Darkness; the former usually depending on the knowledge and invocation of the Angelic natures, the latter on the method of evocation of the Demonic races. Usually the former is termed White Magic, as opposed to the latter, or Black Magic.
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The Sacred Magic points out [56] that the point of black magic is "generally the forming of a Pact with an Evil Spirit." Though the entire business of black magic was a late addition to the manuscripts, the Consul's interest in such matters aligns him with necromancers such as Faust and Faustus. The question of how much the Consul actually knows about "all this alchemy and cabbala business" remains, however, an open one.
118.2 white sculpturings of clouds, like billowing concepts in the brain of Michelangelo.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), often considered the greatest of renaissance painters and sculptors, whose celebrated works include the paintings on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel; the Last Judgment behind the altar of the same chapel; the Pieta in St. Peters; the statue of David in the Florentine Academy; the figure of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome; and the tomb of Pope Julius II. Hugh may have in mind the story of how Michelangelo received confirmation of his destiny as a sculptor while gazing at the clouds billowing over the Apennines.
118.3 cows and pigs and chickens.
From ‘Bound East for Cardiff’, in Eugene O'Neill's The Moon of the Carribees and Six Other Plays of the Sea [17-18], an exchange between a dying American, Yank, and an Irishman, Driscoll, where Yank tells of his dream, never to be realised:
YANK (musingly). It must be great to stay on dry land all your life and have a farm and a house of your own with cows and pigs and chickens, "way in the middle of the land where yuh'd never smell the sea or see a ship. It must be great to have a wife, and kids to play with at night after supper when your work was done. It must be great to have a home of your own, Drisc.
DRISC (with a great sigh). It must, surely, but what's the use av thinkin' av ut? Such things are not for the loikes av us.
The "allusion" (so deep as to be invisible) reflects Yvonne's longing for her husband to have a wife and kids, far away from the sea (she suggests Saskatchewan); but the dream is impossible: Yank dies before reaching land. The Introduction [16] by St John Ervine cites these lines and observes that Yank's dream would always be an unreality, but one that might make him tolerate his life with greater philosophy: "Heaven must seem very attractive to the inhabitants of hell, but how do we know what it seems like for those who live in it?" This Yvonne and Hugh can never know.
119.1 Tristan da Cunha .... an admirable place for one's teeth.
Tristan da Cunha (named for the Portuguese admiral who discovered it in 1506) is the principal island of an isolated group in the South Atlantic, roughly halfway between South Africa and South America, and some 1,200 miles southwest of St Helena, of which it has been a dependency since 1938. The island is some forty square miles, rising 7,640 feet to a volcanic crater (thought to be extinct, the volcano erupted in 1962). The group includes Gough Island (Diego Alvarez), which is uninhabited, some 250 miles southeast of Tristan, as well as Inaccessible Island, Nightingale, Middle and Stoltenhoff Islands, and a few isolated rocks. The group is mentioned in Donnelly [43] as a remnant of the lost continent of Atlantis. Hugh's reference to teeth is based on fact; the small community has no dentist, but there is little necessity for one since the lack of sugar in the diet and the presence of natural fluorides in the drinking water mean that the islanders invariably possess perfect teeth.
From Skr. Dvipa-Sakhadhara, "the island abode of bliss"; an island in the Arabian Sea, some 150 miles from Cape Guardafui and 200 miles from the Arabian coast. Discovered by Tristan da Cunha in 1507, it remained uncolonised until it was occupied by the East India Company in 1834, and in 1886 it became part of the British East Aden Protectorate. It is now part of South Yemen. The island is mountainous, dry, and attractive. Its five thousand inhabitants survive by fishing and trade, and the island is known for its ghee, dragon's blood, aloes, dates and pearls.
Hugh is more fascinated by Socotra's ancient history, which is shrouded in legend. The island is mentioned in the first century Periplus Maris Erythraei (the unknown Greek trader calls it Dioseorida); in Pliny's Natural History [VI.xxxii, 153]; and, above all, in the Travels of Marco Polo of the late thirteenth century. For a long time Marco Polo's island remained undiscovered by the West and legends accrued about it; it was known to the West as an island of spices (frankincense, myrrh, and ambergris); a Christian land whose converts had degenerated to savagery; a place guarded by fearsome scorpion men; and (as Marco Polo himself claimed), an island where "there are the best enchanters in the world" [Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Henry Yule, 1875, vol. 2, 399]. There is no mention, however, of camels that climb like chamois, and the statement is categorically at odds with Charles Doughty's description of the "lumpish brutes" [Arabia Deserta, Ch. 3].
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In one draft [UBC 29-13, 21A], Hugh and Yvonne discussed the Consul's island in terms of "Jack London's island", before rejecting the island in favour of a place near the sea. After "there isn't any house on it", the text added: "No islands on the lake either: like Jack London, Geoff probably has mined it with whisky bottles."
120.2 Pineaus Lake.
Pinaus Lake, thirty miles from Vernon, B.C., where Geoffrey was once Consul [see #353.2]. Kilgallin comments [169]: "Ironically, Pinaus Lake is famous for its agate, the alchemical antidote to thirst"; in his 1965 thesis [26], he linked Geoffrey's return to health on Pineaus Lake and Watts-Dunton's cure of Swinburne at his house called The Pines [see #61.5].
120.3 hardpan.
A hard layer of earth beneath the soil, composed mainly of clay and impervious to water.
120.4 Poor Fish River .... Aneroid or Gravelburg .... Product .... Dumble.
With two exceptions, tiny remote towns, rivers and lakes of Canada:
(a) Poor Fish River. A small river draining Poorfish Lake in the Northwest Territories, close to the Manitoba and Saskatchewan borders.
(b) Onion Lake. A small lake in northern Ontario, north of Thunder Bay. Angus McCandless, in October Ferry [11], once had a poultry farm there, but lost heavily on account of the low price of eggs.
(c) the Guadalquivir. The major river of southern Spain, draining the Andalusian plains and flowing through Cordoba and Seville before reaching the Atlantic.
(d) Como. A lake in Lombardy, northern Italy, 25 miles north of Milan, and famed for its beauty; also, irrelevantly, a small town near Hudson, in Quebec Province.
(e) Horsefly. Horsefly Lake, 28 miles long, in British Columbia's Chilcotins, 120 miles southeast of Prince George, draining eventually into the Fraser River.
(f) Aneroid. A tiny village in Saskatchewan, a wheat centre about forty-five miles southeast of Swift Current.
(g) Gravelburg. More accurately, Gravelbourg. A small town in southern Saskatchewan.
(h) Product. A small town in Saskatchewan, east-southeast of Saskatoon.
(i) Dumble. A small town in the middle of Saskatchewan, southwest of Prince Albert National Park; mentioned in October Ferry, where Angus McCandless rather confusingly mentions having taken up a homestead, “sixty miles from Dumble, Alberta” [10]. ‘Bumble, Saskatchewan’ in ‘Present State of Pompeii’ [Hear Us O Lord, 187] is presumably Marjorie’s mistranscription.
121.1 I've been to Niagara Falls.
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The predictable honeymoon trip, on the occasion of Yvonne's first marriage, to be followed by the equally predictable first ticket to Reno [72].
121.2 the Macs-Paps.
The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, with the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, formed the third unit of the 15th International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Named after two leaders of the 1837 rebellions against Britain, it consisted of Canadians, most of whom had previously been fighting with the Americans. It took an active part in fighting in the north.
121.3 a Pict.
The Picts were an ancient people of Scotland who fought furiously against Roman rule. By referring to McGoff’s Scots ancestry, Hugh implies his opposition to the British way of life (Romans and Britons sharing a common colonialist mentality). McGoff is the name of one of the sailors on the Oedipus Tyrannus in Ultramarine.
121.4 a sort of Pango-Pango quality.
Pago Pago, the largest town of American Samoa, represents for Hugh as Vancouver does for McGoff a kind of second-rate seediness. Lowry claimed in a letter to Clemens ten Holder [23 April 1953; CL 2, 379] that he referred to the amount of rainfall.
121.5 sausage and mash.
A phrase sometimes applied to domestic sexuality; hence, perhaps, the ‘Puritan’ quality.
121.6 Burrard Inlet.
An arm of the Strait of Georgia extending inland some twenty-three miles and separating Vancouver city from North Vancouver. Lowry`s shack at Dollarton was on the north shore of this inlet at the point where Indian Arm breaks off from the main inlet.
121.7 New Spain.
"Nueva Espana", the name given by Hernán Cortés and the early Spanish settlers to the Spanish-American territories in the Central Americas. Used loosely, it embraced all the land on the mainland north of Panama, the islands of the Caribbean, and even the Philippines; more precisely, it was restricted to present-day Mexico, plus the territories of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (lost to the USA in 1848), with perhaps the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. The term fell into disuse after the independence of Mexico was proclaimed in 1821, so Hugh's use of it is deliberately archaic.
121.8 beer parlours so uncomfortable and cold.
Lowry displayed his contempt in verse [CP, #266]:
Old Blake was warm, he got down to the hub
When he said we should worship in the pub
Save only in Canada, where I'm told
The tavern and the churches both are cold.
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121.9 Joe Venuti.
A celebrated jazz violinist and one of Hugh's heroes [see #154.2].
122.1 the seine fishermen.
A seine net is large, buoyed at the top by corks and weighted at the bottom so it floats perpendicularly. The net is usually anchored at one point, and the fishermen inscribe a large circle to entrap the fish within it. The whiskerandoes in the opening chapter of Redburn are "hauling in a seine" [see #77.5].
122.2 jack-in-the pulpits.
An American plant of the lily family, its a spike of flowers partly arched by a hood-like covering.
122.3 a faint carillon of bells.
In Goethe’s Faust [I.784], Faust, about to end his life, is dissuaded by the sounds of Easter bells, and proclaims: “Die Erde hat mich wieder” (“the earth has [claimed] me again”).
123.1 Malebolge ... the serpentine barranca.
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The Malebolge is the eighth circle of Dante's hell [see #100.2], here applied to the barranca, whose other attribute, "serpentine", is a reminder that even in this apparent Eden the serpent is ever present. The Serpentine is a long, winding, artificial lake in Hyde Park, London, into which Shelley's first wife Harriet, pregnant and deserted, flung herself and drowned in 1816.
123.2 Yvonne looked suddenly ill at ease.
Yvonne's depression is caused by memories associated with the mouldering ruins; in part the lost love of Maximilian and Carlota, to which the Consul referred [59], but in particular the sudden recollection that it was here, while she and Geoffrey were embracing in the ruins, that Jacques Laruelle had first stumbled across them. A pencilled note in the manuscripts [UBC 29-13, 35] indicated that Yvonne was to feel "a presage of her own death"; the intimation was to be underlined by her immediately asking for a cigarette (as she does).
123.3 Should Juarez have had the man shot or not?
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After Maximilian surrendered to the Liberal forces on 15 May 1867, Juárez decided that the emperor should be tried by court-martial and that the state should seek the death penalty. Despite pleas for clemency from all over the world and a split decision in the six-man tribunal, the death penalty was pronounced. At dawn on 19 June 1867, on the Cerro de las Campañas, or "Hill of the Bells" outside Querétara, Maximilian and two of his officers were shot by firing squad. In the film Juarez (1939, dir. William Dieterle, starring Bette Davis and Brian Aherne), which Lowry had seen and which may well be his point of reference, Maximilian’s last request was to hear the popular song, ‘La Paloma’.
124.1 He should have had old thingmetight, Díaz, shot at the same time.
Since Porfirio Díaz, later to become the oppressive and unpopular president who undid many of the liberal reforms initiated by Juárez [see #108.2], was a victorious general under Juárez, he could hardly have been shot in 1867. However, in 1871 Díaz ran against Juárez in the presidential elections and following the latter's victory proclaimed himself in revolt. His army was defeated by the federalists of Juárez. Turner describes [307] how Juárez captured Díaz and brought him before him, saying that he deserved to be shot like a rebel but that the country would take into consideration his services rendered during the War of Intervention. Before effective retaliation could be taken, Juárez had suffered a coronary seizure and died.
124.2 those wonderful names.
When Galileo first turned his tiny telescope towards the moon in 1609, he was able to distinguish mountains and large dark areas which looked like great bodies of water, to which he gave the name maria, "seas". Other astronomers and mapmakers (Langrenus, 1645; Hevelius, Selenographia, 1647; Riccioli, Almagestumnovum, 1651) continued a tradition of fanciful names, and hence the still-current terms Oceans, Seas, Lakes and Marshes to describe huge, barren, dry plains. The Sea of Tranquillity is the Mare Tranquillitatus on the near side (close to the Mare Crisium, or "Sea of Crises"); the Marsh of Corruption is the Palus Putredinis, or "Marsh of Decay" in the Mare Imbrium, or "Sea of Rains"; but the Sea of Darkness is either an ancient term no longer current (most of those coined by Hevelius were swept away by Riccioli, but no Tenebris appears to be among them), or, as seems probable, Lowry has made his own contribution to selenography (there is, however, a Taenarium Promontory, named after the fabled entrance to the infernal regions).
In the 1940 Volcano [126], Yvonne remains for Hugh the other side of the moon, the side turned away. When he comments that she reminds him of the moon, she smiles and hopes it is not the Marsh of Corruption. In an earlier revision the conceit was used by Hugh, of "little seas of darkness in Geoff ... on the side of the moon you can't see" [UBC 29-12, B].
124.3 Sokotra ... where the frankincense and myrrh used to come from.
For Socotra, see #119.2. Behind the romantic details about the mysterious island "where no one has ever been" is a more prosaic story, told by Hugh in an earlier draft [UBC 28-15, 15]:
"I've never known anybody who's ever set foot on Sokotra," he said. "But one ship I was on they kidded me into believing that the ship was actually bound there to get frankincense and myrhh. And it really is the island where the frankincense and myrhh used to come from, by the way. And the camels climb up the mountains like chamois." Sokotra, with frankincense and myrrh, and camels that can climb St Paul's, haunts Ultramarine, In Ballast to the White Sea and the pre-1940 drafts of UTV, but the origin of the myths remains unknown.
124.4 the boundless impatience, the immeasurable longing.
At the beginning of Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), Freud cites a friend's (Romain Rolland) sensation of eternity as something limitless and unbounded, an "oceanic feeling" which is religious in its very being; but Freud says that he cannot discover this "oceanic" feeling in himself. Lowry used this in his screenplay of Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night [65]. To Robert Pick, who wished to make a German translation of Under the Volcano [7 June 1947; CL 2, 62], Lowry hinted at "the ghost of Wilhelm Meister" behind his phrase (which, as Grace notes [63], is repeated in October Ferry [Ch. 21]). The reference is to "Chapter Last" of Meister's Travels [Carlyle's translation, II.198], with its sense of "boundless spaces" and "vast expanses" that invoke a curious theme: "Where I am useful, is my country."