CHAPTER IX Previous Chapter ~ Next Chapter Click on a text link or thumbnail to open more information or images in the right-hand frame. Bold numbered links to annotations (e.g. [see #254.1]) in this or other chapters will open in this frame.                                                         254.1 Arena Tomalín .... What a wonderful time everybody was having. The overblown, transparently jaunty prose suggests D.H. Lawrence at such moments (as in St Mawr and The Plumed Serpent) as his heroines castigate and reject the meaningless "let's be happy" world and reassess their own experience; in particular, The Plumed Serpent opens with a scene in a bull-ring. Curious marginal glosses have shaped this opening [UBC WT 1-3, 1]: a plea for a womanly perspective ("she is a woman"); and the direction, "Make shorter, make present, make clearer. Christ knows what is wrong, but it is wrong: the tone, dialogue, everything is wrong & superficial. Why?" One provocative answer is offered [4]: "the conclusion is inescapable –the train of thought of the average woman save in bed is not worth reporting." As this draft indicates [15], and as Rick Asals confirms, Yvonne's sensibility in Chapter IX gave Lowry great difficulty: "This is too bloody for words: where the hell is my sense of humour that I don't strike out such gibberish?" 254.2 the 'Rocket'. The celebrated steam engine built by George Stephenson (1781-1848), which in October 1829 won a £500 prize for its design and was employed on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. It was not the first steam engine, Stephenson having built and run others previously, but the superiority of its design inaugurated the age of steam. In a letter to Harold Matson [8 Dec. 1951; CL 2, 475], Lowry claims that one of his forbears on his father's side was Stephensen's [sic] chief on the Rocket. 254.3 donkey engine. A small portable steam engine, commonly used on ships to lift cargo. 254.4 the brilliantly coloured serape of existence. Eisenstein A direct echo of Eisenstein's The Film Sense [197]: Do you know what a "Serape" is? A Serape is the striped blanket that the Mexican indio, the Mexican charro –every Mexican wears. And the Serape could be the symbol of Mexico. So striped and violently contrasting are the cultures in Mexico running next to each other and at the same time being centuries away. 255.1 the bull must be caught in a special way. One rule of the bull-throwing [see #147.4]. Sometimes the bull is thrown off balance with a pole, but in another Mexican version the cowboys perform a "tailing", riding after the cow or calf, grasping its tall, and with a sudden twist throwing it to the ground. 255.2 always gay. Given the "tragic history" of Mexico [254], there may be an echo of Yeats's 'Lapus Lazuli', in which gay is used several times with the sense of "tragic joy." However, toujours gai was a cliché of French music-hall and variety shows, especially when down but not quite out. The emotional tension of the chapter falls between the two. 256.1 Las Novedades. "The Novelties"; a common title (especially in Oaxaca) for the kind of little kiosk that sells cigarettes, sweets, lottery tickets and soft drinks. The failure to ring Dr. Figueroa adds vehemence to the Consul's “Forward to the bloody arena then”. 256.2 Xiutepec. Otherwise Jiutepec, a small town about six miles south of Cuernavaca [see #240.1(c)]. 256.3 the dog that was dying on the street in Honolulu. In the 1940 Volcano [248; UBC 26-1, 22] the dog dies in Cambridge, "in Silver Street", the motif lost as Yvonne became American. It then appeared [UBC 28-1, 3] in Charleston, Mass., "the Blackstone country". Asals points out [Making, 429] Lowry's compression of Yvonne's memory, in terms of the death of "little Geoffrey", trouble with her periods, being startled in a boat by a rising seal, this causing her almost to faint, thinking it was the dog again, "dripping and groaning sibilant reproach, returning for her perhaps, begging her to share its tumescent fate in the abyss" [UBC 31-1, 4]. The incident defines her reaction to the dying Indian, but Lowry finally reduced the trauma: "so that once – but what was the good thinking of that"?" Instead, she gives her hat (rather than the dog) "a final pat". The new Yvonne, Asals comments [261], determined on hope and happiness, is also determined not to focus on this earlier unpleasantness. 256.4 before the mirror. Yvonne's vision of the old woman from Tarasco [see #50.3] is an intimation of death, also suggested by the Biblical image of "through a glass, darkly" [I Corinthians 13:12]. In one revision [UBC WT 1-3, 3], Yvonne's tired eyes are playing "Geoffreyish tricks". 257.1 olés. Cries of applause and appreciation given at bullfights for feats of particular daring; half-hearted olés are a contradiction in terms. 257.2 Just like Ferdinand. The Story of Ferdinand Yvonne is referring to The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf, first published in 1937 and almost immediately made into a film by Walt Disney. Unlike other bulls, Ferdinand preferred to sit and smell flowers, but on the day that five men came from Madrid to pick out the biggest, fastest, roughest bull, he inadvertently sat on a bee. Brought into the bull-ring, Ferdinand saw all the flowers in the señoritas' hair, sat down to smell them, refused to fight, and had to be taken home, where he happily sits beneath his favourite cork tree smelling the flowers. Yvonne ‘hopefully’ looks forward to such a happy ending, but unrealistically; at real bullfights, bulls that refuse to fight are butchered in the corrals. 257.3 Nandi ... vehicle of Síva ... Vindra ... Huracán. Siva is the Hindu god of destruction, the personification of the disintegrative forces of the cosmos, with whose worship many bloody rites are associated; but he is also the god of regeneration and sexuality, and the sacred Ganges which issues from Vishnu's foot gets its fertilising power as it descends to earth through Siva's luxuriant locks. The vahana or vehicle of Siva is the bull Nandi, son of Kasyapa and Surabhi; a sacred snow-white bull upon which the god often rides. The transition from ‘Ferdinand’ to ‘Nandi’ is obvious, but that from ‘Nandi’ to ‘Huracán’ is more oblique. In the 1940 Volcano the Consul says [253-54; echoing Donnelly, Ch.9] that "Oregon is huracán ... Portuguese: furacão ... Strange" [see #86.1]; and Yvonne notices [262] that the markings on the bull's flank "made a perfect picture of the Americas". These speculations disappeared on revision, and the Consul says much more about Nandi, vehicle of Siva. This derives from Rawlinson's India [127-28]: Siva, or Mahadeva, "the Great God," is the antithesis of Vishnu. He has been identified with the Vedic storm-god, Rudra, but in some of his aspects may perhaps even be traced back to the early civilisation of the Indus valley. He is the Lord of Yogis, who seek union with the World Soul by intense concentration, and he sits for endless ages in meditation among the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, smeared with ashes and wearing a necklace of skulls; the river Ganges flows from his hair. In another aspect he is the god of fertility and procreation. He is worshipped under the symbol of the lingam or phallus, and his vehicle is Nandi, the bull. ‘Vindra’ was Lowry’s mistake. He may have confused Vishnu with Indra, but Asals notes [Making, 429] that Rawlinson says that "Vishnu  … has been identified with the Vedic storm-god, Rudra", and suggests that Lowry's eye "slipped" from Vishnu to Rudra to produce "the impossible hybrid, Vindra". Rawlinson, curiously, had written an earlier book: Intercourse between India and the Western World [Cambridge: CUP, 1916]. The identification of Indra with the ancient Mexican god Huracán represents the Consul"s "sensational" advance on Donnelly [see #16.2], though even this has been anticipated by Lewis Spence's suggestion of resemblances between Indra and the Mexican rain-god Tlaloc [Gods of Mexico, 15]. 257.4 Charros. The Mexican equivalent of a cowboy, but usually a weekend cowboy; groups of charros meet at charreadas, or rodeos, to practise feats of horsemanship, lassoing, bull-throwing, riding wild horses, and so forth. The charro costume, originally a practical working outfit, is often splendidly ornate; tight trousers with silver buttons and seams, a bolero jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat inlaid with silver thread. 258.1 Yvonne's father. Linked to Geoffrey as "Constable" to "Firmin". The UBC Templeton Collection includes in Margerie's hand "Notes on Yvonne": born 1908 "in New York or maybe Washington, DC"; English-Scottish heritage; her mother from Virginia or Maryland, 1926; at 18, film debut; previously, a good finishing school and one or two short trips abroad with her parents; "Perhaps her father is dead & I think she regards her mother, with well-bred affection, as an amiable ninny"; 1928, married at 20 "with fanfare & church wedding"; 1929, father's estate and husband's damaged by crash but still left well off; 1932, has a child which [sic] dies at six months; 1933, "discovers husband's infidelity, is shocked, wounded, humiliated – & goes to Reno for divorce which is conducted with a minimum of scandal"; 1933 to 1935, travels; 1935, "meets Consul & marries him shortly." Margerie draws up similar "timetables" for Geoffrey and Hugh, and for the relationship of Geoffrey and Yvonne, focusing on their meeting [then] in Algeciras, where Geoffrey has been "full consul" since 1932-33. The parallels between her father and Geoffrey hint at an Electra complex; there is a similar relationship between Dick and Nicole in Lowry's screenplay of Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. As Asals notes [Making, 267], each character, like the old Indian at the chapter’s end bears the symbolic weight of a father. 258.2 the Spanish-American war. A brief war waged between Spain and the USA in 1898, leading to the loss by Spain of the last remnants of her empire in the Americas, and the loss of the Philippines and Marianas in the Pacific. The USA gained Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii - and a sense of its "manifest destiny" as a great nation. The immediate cause of the war was the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbour, 15 February 1898, an act that led to the outbreak of war in April. United States forces saw action in Manila and Cuba in several brief skirmishes that brought little honour to either side. Yvonne's "new message from Garcia" [see #96.1] refers to one of the most publicised events of this war. 258.3 synthetic hemp from the pineapple tops. Hemp is a hard fibre derived from the leaves of various tropical plants, of which manila hemp is the most satisfactory because of its durability. Pina is a fibre made from the large leaves of the pineapple plant, and used for mats, bags and clothing, but the Captain’s plans are (commercially) about as realistic as harnessing the energy of the volcano. 258.4 He sat on the lanai sipping okoolihao. Lanai is a Hawaiian word meaning a "porch" or "verandah"; a living room area opening in part to the outdoors. Okoolihao (more commonly, okelehao) derives from a Hawaiian word meaning "iron buttocks", as applied to an iron try-pot still; hence the alcoholic liquor, made from ti or taro roots, koji rice lees and molasses, distilled therein. 258.5 The World War. If the year is 1914, and Yvonne was six, she must have been born in 1908, the same year as Hugh. 259.1 Captain Constable. Of the possible associations that generated this surname (ranging from that of the celebrated English painter to unspeakable French puns and/or the complementarity of ‘[Con]stable’ and ‘Firm[in]’, the most persuasive is the patriarchal hint of Freudian authority implicit in this figure of the Law. 259.2 Consul to Iquique. A consular appointment to Iquique, in the Atacama desert of northern Chile, is of about the same standing as one to Quauhnahuac, each at the end of long, dry and spiritually desolate roads. State Department records show that there had been an American Consul in Iquique since February 1877, but the consulate closed on 31 March 1915, reopening with the end of the war in January 1920. It finally closed in October 1931. Thus, Captain Constable could not have been consul to Iquique during "those long war years in Chile." 259.3 that republic of stupendous coastline yet narrow girth. Chile has a coastline of 2,653 miles; but the widest point the country is only 221 miles, and it is typically much less than this. 259.4 bring up. The verb is used in the nautical sense of a vessel coming to a halt, by lowering anchor or (as here) by running aground. 259.5 at Cape Horn, or in the nitrate country. The southernmost and northernmost parts of Chile. The nitrate country is in the northern part of Chile, particularly in the Atacama desert. This narrow strip, 450 miles long, supplies almost the entire world's supply of natural sodium nitrate, a mineral used in the production of fertiliser and explosives. For Cape Horn, see #47.1. 259.6 Bernardo O'Higgins. Bernardo Riquelme O'Higgins (1778-1842), the liberator of Chile, was the illegitimate son of an Irish father and Spanish mother. Born in Chillán, Chile, he was educated in Peru, Spain and England. Returning to Chile in 1802, he joined the revolutionists in 1810. By 1813 he was in command of the army, and though his first battles against the Spaniards were unsuccessful a spectacular cavalry charge under his leadership in 1817 led to a decisive Chilean victory at the battlefield of Chacabuco. He was made dictator of Chile in 1818 and declared its independence from Spain, but his democratic sentiments and proposed reforms aroused opposition and in 1823 he was deposed and exiled to Peru. 259.7 Robinson Crusoe. The figure of Robinson Crusoe, in the novel of that name by Daniel Defoe (?1660-1731), implies self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Crusoe, shipwrecked on an uninhabited Pacific island, saved tools and stores from the wreck, built a house and a boat, domesticated goats, rescued Man Friday from cannibals, and was finally rescued by the coming of an English ship. Defoe's novel, written in 1719, was based upon the real-life adventures of Alexander Selkirk, who in 1704 was marooned upon the island of Juan Fernandez a few hundred miles off the coast of Chile, and was not rescued until 1709. 259.8 the Tropic of Capricorn. This imaginary line, which runs 23º 30' south of the Equator, passes slightly to the south of Iquique, where Consul Constable was stationed. This complements the location of Cuernavaca, on the Tropic of Cancer [see #3.4]. 259.9 the armistice. The cease-fire, beginning 11 November 1918, which marked the end of World War I. 259.10 Hilo. The largest town (now a big city) on the island of Hawaii, close to Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world. 259.11 a wire-fence company. This detail, like many others concerning Yvonne's father, is based on Margerie Lowry's father, John Stuart Bonner, who at one point was foreign manager of the Page Woven Wire Fence Company, in Adrian, Michigan [Day, 251]. 260.1 cashiered from the army. To be cashiered (D. casseeren, "to break") means to be given a dishonourable discharge for misconduct. The incident, illusionary or not, seems to have rankled with Captain Constable in much the same way that the Samaritan affair has with the Consul, and it is yet another incident (the drinking, the consular appointment and the insanely complicated pipe are others) which suggest that Yvonne's emotional bondage to the older Geoffrey replicates her earlier ties to her father. 260.2 “serials” … “westerns”. Serial adventures were shown each week in episodes, each of which ended at a point of suspense or crisis. Adventurous, mysterious, often exotic, they were then part of the regular fare of movie-goers. Their "queen" was Pearl White, famous for her appearances in such serials as The Perils of Pauline. Margerie Bonner Lowry Margerie Bonner Lowry had a brief career in serials; the “five years” (for Yvonne and her) would be 1921 to 1926. Antony Slide notes in 'The Film Career of Margerie Bonner Lowry' [MLR 29 & 30 (Fall 1991 & Spring 1992): 20-26] that she was never a star, but received screen credit in 13 silent features. She had the female lead in a few two-reel Westerns and shorts filmed between 1925 and 1927, then shared it with her sister Priscilla, but, again, did not receive star billing. She appeared several times as an extra, including a bit part as a Roman girl in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934); a late revision [UBC WT 1-4, 7] reads: "had actually had a small part in the Ten Commandments." A marginal note on this page reads "westerns? Hugh in cowboy clothes"; hence the reflection [265] that "Hugh and Yvonne were in some grotesque fashion transposed". 261.1 Bill Hodson, the cowboy star. A figure probably based on the popular cowboy star, William S. Hart [see #60.3]. 261.2 a little secret amusement. Yvonne is amused because she knows more about horses than Hugh, but ‘miraculously’ reflects her sense that Geoffrey would want to drink [see #109.5]. 261.3 that day in Robinson. The day of Hugh and Yvonne's presumed "betrayal" of the Consul in Paris [see #98.3]. 261.4 Yvonne the Terrible. A gloriously inappropriate reference to Ivan the Terrible, the powerful and brutal Russian tsar. The pun may point to Eisenstein's film of that name, and (like ‘Laruelle’ [see #4.7]) could well have been a factor in Lowry’s choice of name for his heroine [but see #24.4]. 261.5 the 'Boomp Girl .... 'double pick-offs" .... a flying mount' ....'Oomph Girl'. Hollywood slang: (a) the 'Boomp Girl'. A publicity name given to Yvonne and similar to such absurdities as the "It girl" (Clara Bow), the "Oomph Girl" (Anne Sheridan), and "The Body" (Marie McDonald). (b) 'double pick-offs'. A stunt whereby a rider on horseback goes between two other riders and pulls them to the ground. (c) a 'flying mount'. A stunt where the actor jumps or vaults into the saddle either from the side or from the rear by leap-frogging onto the horse's back. (d) an 'Oomph Girl'. The title eventually assigned to Anne Sheridan in a publicity stunt in the 1940s. 262.1 Venus just emerging from the surf. The columnist is dimly aware that Venus (Aphrodite), goddess of love, rose naked from the surf to become the wife of the lame smith, Vulcan (Hephaestus), to whom she was unfaithful with Mars (Ares), the god of war. The blurb unwittingly intimates Yvonne's future, and the image of herself that Yvonne sees in the printer's window [54]. 262.2 the University of Hawaii. At first the College of Hawaii, it became the University of Hawaii in 1920. The main campus was at Honolulu, but Yvonne could have attended a branch campus at Hilo. 262.3 the 'Madame Curie' of astronomy. Madame Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish-born chemist and physicist, who with her French husband Pierre won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 for the discovery of radium. Yvonne's wish to become a star is more appropriately achieved at the end of Chapter XI; one hopes that her study would equip her to critique this mixed metaphor. 264.1 Virgil Avenue or Mariposa. Two streets about eight blocks from each other and running north and south off Wilshire Boulevard in central Los Angeles ("The City of the Angels"). The names also possess intimations of the Divine Comedy and the myth of Psyche (Sp. mariposa, "a butterfly"). 264.2 the Town House ... The Zebra Room. The Sheraton Town House, at 2959 Wilshire Boulevard, red brick and cast stone, was built in 1929 and closed in 1993. It was once one of the most elegant hotels in Los Angeles (Elizabeth Taylor married Nicky Hilton there in 1950, and Mae West’s last film was shot there); but in later years it was used as subsidized housing for the poor, until reopened as a hotel in 2001. It contained on the first floor a celebrated nightclub called ‘the Zebra Room’ (long gone), designed by Wayne McAllister and the “ritziest” of its day, with walls that featured paintings of zebras and chairs made of zebra skin. It was sometimes used for “debutante” (i.e., informal) dancing. The scene is revisited in Lowry’s poem, ‘Delirium in Los Angeles’ [CP, #46]. 264.3 'Man's public inquiry of the hour'. An unidentified billboard, one which Yvonne also recalls [331], and which accentuates the sense of time running out. Her use of ‘hoarding is unusual, since the word is specifically British. Also mentioned in ‘Delirium in Los Angeles’ [CP, #46]. 265.1 Times Square.

Hotel Astor

The area in New York City, at Broadway and 42nd Street, in the heart of the entertainment area. The district was formerly known as Longacre Square, but the name was changed in 1904 when the New York Times built a skyscraper there, well-known for its then innovative flashing illuminated news, which, as Yvonne says, travelled round the top of the building. The Astor Hotel, which opened in 1904 and was demolished in 1967, was part of the complex; it was, in its day, one of New York’s finest hotels.

265.2 the best for less.

Identified by Andersen [46], as the slogan of Rudley's Food Stores, a New York Company, and seen by Bill Plantagenet in the opening pages of Lunar Caustic; a phrase that seems to underline the spiritual bankruptcy of a materialistic society (it is the conscious antithesis of "less is more" in October Ferry [166]).

265.3 Dead End.

A 1937 American movie, directed by William Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and starring Humphrey Bogart; from the stage play by Lillian Hellman and Sydney Kingsley. It was intended to be an examination of the urban slums as a breeding place for vice, but though the intended message was a humanitarian protest against slums, the Dead End Kids seemed so attractive that the message was lost and the potential delinquents ended up as heroes.

265.4 Romeo and Juliet.

The 1936 version of Shakespeare's play, directed by George Cukor, with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer "in a lavish studio-bound semi-pop version for MGM" [Halliwell, 620]. The juxtaposition with ‘Dead End’ is deliberately inconspicuous.

266.1 a mechanical crane.

A siphon or crooked pipe for drawing liquor out of a cask.

266.2 Le Destin de Yvonne Griffaton.

Fr. "The Destiny of Yvonne Griffaton"; a fictitious film, attributed in the novel to Jacques Laruelle in his pre-Hollywood days, the heroine of which Yvonne Constable closely identifies herself with. The name "Griffaton" suggests griffin, a fabulous monster with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Note the hint of "Griffiths" (either ‘D.W.’ or ‘Corinne’).

266.3 the little cinema in Fourteenth Street.

The moviehouse, otherwise unidentified, is somewhere in Greenwich Village. The stills, or photographs displayed outside the cinema, display to Yvonne images of her loneliness.

266.4 Dubonnet, Amer Picon, Les 10 Frattelinis, Moulin Rouge.

Advertising signs in Paris:

266.5 a shadowy horse, gigantic.

As ‘statue’ implies, this horse is associated in Yvonne's mind with the equestrian statue of Huerta [44], and anticipates the horse that will trample her to death in Chapter XI.

267.1 the Folies Bergères.

The Folies-Bergères, a Parisian music hall in the Rue Richer, Paris, which opened in 1869 with programmes of light opera and pantomime but increasingly gained itself a reputation for shows featuring lavish decor and spectacular nudity. Its name in the early years of the century was almost synonymous with "gai Paris".

267.2 the Opéra.

The Theâtre Nationale de l'0péra, or Paris Opera House, designed by Charles Garnier; one of the finest buildings of the Second Empire, with an ornate front, beautiful marble columns, magnificent foyers and halls, and a huge concert chamber. Building began in 1861, and the first concert took place in 1875. The Opéra houses a rich library, the National Academy of Music, and a museum of musical mementoes.

267.3 Leoncavallo's Zaza.

Ruggero Leoncavallo (1858-1919) was an Italian composer of light opera, who wrote in opposition to Wagner and Verdi. His fame rests mainly on I Pagliacci (1892), but Zazà (1900) was a moderate success. This four-act opera, an adaptation of the play by Pierre Berton and Charles Simon, tells how Zazà, a young singer, falls in love with the wealthy Parisian, Milio Dufresne, not knowing that he is married. She finds out and tells him untruthfully that she has revealed their intimacy to his wife, but finding that his love for his wife is real and his attraction to her a passing fancy, she relents, tells him the truth, and sends him back to his family, while she remains (like Yvonne) alone and desolate.

267.4 in tumbrils .... shot by the Commune, shot by the Prussians.

Three phrases which summarise three phases of French history:

267.5 standing upright in death.

The opening chapter of P.C. Wren's Beau Geste (1924) tells of "the strange events at Zinderneuf", an outpost in the French Sahara. Major Henri de Beaujolais arrives at the deserted fortress, which has been attacked by Arabs, and finds it "defended" by corpses, each propped up in a life-like position. The explanation given later is that bodies of dead men were placed at their posts to create the illusion of a fortress still manned.

267.6 the Dreyfus Case.

Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a French officer of Jewish descent, unwittingly became the centre of a famous miscarriage of justice which led first to his imprisonment and then to a fierce controversy preceding his rehabilitation. Because of the alleged similarity of his handwriting and that upon an incriminating letter addressed to a German military attaché, he was arrested in 1894 and sent to the notorious Devil's Island. Despite evidence strongly suggesting his innocence, a violently anti-Semitic press campaign and military cover-up prevented the immediate re-opening of his case. In the ensuing controversy, which saw liberals and intellectuals arraigned against conservatives, royalists, the military, and the clergy, Emile Zola published his famous letter, "J’accuse!" ("I accuse"), for which he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment. It was not until 1906 that the sentence condemning Dreyfus was finally quashed.

267.7 mow.

To mouth or make grimaces.

267.8 The Life of the African Lungfish.

The lungfish, as its name implies, is a dipnoan or fish that has lungs as well as gills. The film appears to be Lungfisken, a 1934 study of the lungfish by the Svensk Filmindustri.

267.9 Scarface.

A 1932 film directed by Howard Hawks and produced by Howard Hughes, with a cast headed by Paul Muni and George Raft. The plot, based loosely on the career of Al Capone (whose nickname was ‘Scarface’) tells of a gangster's rise from bodyguard to boss until he is eventually cornered and shot. The film depicts such scenes as the killing of Jim Colisimo and the St Valentine's Day Massacre at greater length and in more cruelly realistic detail than previous gangster movies. Because the violence made crime seem so attractive the film ran into censorship problems, and it was not allowed to circulate until the sub-title, ‘The Shame of the Nation’, was added.

267.10 this old man of the sea.

The story of Sinbad the Sailor is included in The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights. On his fifth voyage Sinbad is wrecked upon an island and meets an old man whom he offers to carry across a river, but no sooner is the Old Man of the Sea mounted upon Sinbad's back than his legs lock round Sinbad's neck so tightly that he is almost choked. Sinbad is forced to carry the old man night and day until at last he tricks him into getting drunk, dislodges him, and kills him. The story is often used as a metaphor for the weight of the past, an image not unlike that of the two Indians at the end of the chapter.

268.1 the music of Ravel .... Bolero.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), French composer best known for his ballet Daphnis et Cloé (1912), his Concerto for the Left Hand (1931), and the orchestral pieces Shéhérazade (1903), Rhapsodie Espagnole (1907), and Boléro (1928). A bolero is a Spanish dance, characterised by sharp turns of the body and a syncopated rhythm. Ravel's Bolero, originally intended to be a ballet, displays great virtuosity in its orchestration, and the music, representing a woman dancing on a table in a cafe full of men, has an almost hypnotic effect as it repeats itself and rises to a magnificent crescendo when passion breaks out, chairs are thrown, and knives are drawn. The date of its composition is not easy to reconcile with what is known of Laruelle's past as a filmmaker.

268.2 the Sphinx.

In Greek mythology, a winged creature with a human head and a lion's body; specifically, the huge statue at Giza depicting such a figure. There may also be a suggestion of the sphinx who appears in Cocteau's La machine infernale [see #209.1] and whose riddle Oedipus must solve to rid Thebes of its plague.

268.3 the Grand Tour.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the essential completion of his formal education for the son of an English aristocrat. Tended by a servant or two and guided by a tutor, the young man would spend a year or so touring the capitals of Western Europe, perfecting his knowledge of other languages and social customs.

268.4 the Tour Eiffel.

The Eiffel Tower, a famous Parisian landmark, built by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) for the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Its radically innovative design (a construction in three stages, utilising thousands of prefabricated metal strips) presaged a new era in civil engineering and architectural design, and its height of almost 1000 feet made it the highest man-made structure of its day.

269.1 huaraches.

A kind of cheap leather sandal, worn everywhere in Mexico.

269.2 salmonberries and thimbleberries.

Small berries that grow wild in British Columbia: salmonberries (Rubus parviflorus) are sometimes distinguished from thimbleberries (Rubus occidentalis), but Armstrong's Western Wild Flowers (a copy of which Lowry owned) says the two are identical [238]. The fruit is like a small raspberry, but disappointing to the taste, for it is mostly seeds.

Dollarton

269.3 a pier.

Lowry's pier at Dollarton was an intensely personal symbol, and the news of its collapse in 1955 left him almost literally heart-broken [Day, 35]. Even here there is a strong sense of identification of the frail structure with the rebuilding of their lives.

270.1 millwheel reflections.

See #112.2 and #38.1, as well as Lowry’s poem, ‘Indian Arm’ [CP, #164].

270.2 chenille.

A fabric with a deep pile. The image is of the green pine trees outlined against the sky, like a design in a deep-piled rug.

270.3 Scorpio and Triangulum, Bootes and the Great Bear.

271.1 a few fishermen.

A late draft [UBC 32-2, 12] added: "to whom Geoff would act as a sort of father-confessor." Like the Consul's dream of 23 nuns in a motor-boat [21], this did not last.

272.1 Guadalajara.

A stirring but sentimental song from Jalisco, Mexico, words and music by Pepe Guizar:

Hugh, repeating the title of the song, thinks immediately of the part he should have played at the Battle of Guadalajara [see #102.2], and is soon galvanised into action.

272.2 Indian summer.

In North America, a period of warm mild weather following the first autumn frosts.

273.1 bracken.

A genus comprising several species of large coarse fern; the word, common in England, is slightly unusual in Yvonne's mind.

273.2 See the old unhappy bull.

A reference to the opening lines of 'The Bull', by Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962), a long miserable poem about a bull on its last legs, dreaming of the days when it had strength and vigour and turning to see the carrion birds and flies waiting for it to die:

The debt to Ralph Hodgson was explicitly acknowledged in the manuscripts [UBC 7-7, 7], as was the parallel between the Consul and John Bull. Hugh, overhearing an argument between the Consul and Yvonne, thinks of John Bull (the epitome of stolid British stupidity) and then of England's failure to intervene in Spain [see #98.1]. The Consul has already identified himself with the bull in the ring [259], futilely trying to break out from the circle of necessity in which it is trapped.

The second bull was referred to in early revisions [UBC WT 1-3, 9] as ‘Nandi II’, but this was deemed inappropriate to Yvonne's consciousness. Likewise [15] the mention of a farm where she could have "three yards of a well-rotted cow" (see #180.1, and October Ferry [32]), the ‘English Page’ detail awkwardly suggesting the death of John Bull. In the 1940 Volcano [166] the debt to Ralph Hodgson was more explicit, the Consul alluding to the end of the poem, which he later hints at [see #290.4(ff)]:

273.3 wild surmises ... Stout Cortéz .... Silent on a peak in Quauhnahuac.

The Consul repeats his pun [see #187.6], making explicit his reference to the end of Keats's sonnet, 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer':

PG. Wodehouse, in The Clicking of Cuthbert [Ch. 2; see #175.16], had alluded to "stout Cortez staring at the Pacific"; as he notes in the second edition:

273.4 the man in dark glasses.

The "reality" of the Consul's "spiders" is apparently substantiated by the fact of Yvonne's noticing them and the Consul's evasive response [see #29.6].

274.1 Es ist vielleicht an ox.

Ger. "It is perhaps an ox"; modelled on the idiom "Das ist vielleicht 'n Kaffer", "he is an awful fool". Lowry may have in mind Tom Harrisson's 'Letter to Oxford' [see #328.4], where the metaphor is used to describe the bovine Oxbridge mentality.

274.2 an oxymoron ... Wisely foolish.

From Gk. oxy, "sharp" and moros, "foolish", a figure of rhetoric in which two contradictory notions are combined (the word itself being an example of such).

275.1 cake-walking.

The cakewalk is a strutting dance or set of elaborate steps, originally performed by blacks in the American South for the prize of a cake.

275.2 the poxbox.

One who carries syphilis; a strong obscenity.

275.3 galvanized itself like a frog.

To galvanise is to stimulate by the application of an electrical current. The word derives from Luigi Galvani (1737-98), professor of anatomy at Bologna, whose investigations into the nature of current electricity brought him fame. His experiments on frogs, 1774-80, led to the understanding of neural transmission of electrical currents in animal tissue. Lowry's simile may derive from Charles Fort's Wild Talents, where "The twitch of the legs of a frog" is associated with Galvani [Fort, 1028].

277.1 They sat closely, hands clasped.

An echo of the Strauss song they used to sing [see #39.8]:

This is the closest that the two will be this day, a last act symbolising love and hope for the future. Lowry was speaking of this scene when he said: "the real point of this chapter is Hope, with a capital H, for this note must be struck in order to stress the later downfall" ['LJC', 80].

Richard Strauss

As Asals notes, with astonishment [Making, 315], only in the galleys does Geoffrey's single unsolicited declaration of his love for Yvonne emerge. Yet that glimpse of the genuine possibility of love that "intensifies the emotional life of the novel and grants stature to both principals", rescuing Yvonne from "a merely fatuous hopefulness" and deepening the tragedy by showing the Consul as capable of envisioning a fulfilling human relationship.

279.1 He left a little for Hugh, however.

The action constitutes an almost willful renunciation of Yvonne's vision the moment her attention is distracted. The Consul has taken the bottle from Hugh's jacket, and a note to that effect [UBC WT 1-3, 3] follows an instruction to "work up the whole vision". Subsequent revisions would "work up" both elements. Lowry on the galleys marked this line for deletion, yet it defines a defensive mentality. Hill comments [‘The Alcoholic on Alcoholism’, 135]: "And he drinks it all – all but a swallow for Hugh, so no-one can say, 'O, did you finish it?' The craftiness of the presumably befuddled alcoholic, when he is simultaneously protecting his liquor supply and his 'honour' cannot be overestimated; the giant flaw in this virtuoso performance is that the audience doesn't know the show is on."

279.2 The Bishop of Tasmania.

The Consul's vision combines various allusions with his own favourite image of broken bottles. In an earlier draft [UBC 7-10, 3] he had simply said:

The vision may reflect Eliot's "Sunlight on a broken column", from 'The Hollow Men', or Ouspensky's description of one who has lost his way in the midst of the deceptions and illusions of the reflected phenomenal world, which he has mistaken for the noumenal world [Tertium Organum, Ch. 16, 162]. There is no desert in Tasmania, but the reference to the Bishop of Tasmania [see #86.3] suggests that Lowry may intend Chapter 27 of Bishop Montgomery's Visions (1909), entitled 'Uphill', which tells of an old missionary in "Regions Beyond" who sitting alone on a mountainside sees the vision of a faint light eastward but as he heads towards it he runs into dangerous rocks, falls, and hits his head. The details are not exact, but the tone is remarkably similar and the old man concludes as he goes down to the valley, having received the vision of a life of mystery:

Ouspensky in Tertium Organum [162] defines the phenomenal world as being "unsubstantial as the image of a landscape in a lake"; the relevance of this speculation is confirmed by a long passage in La Mordida [218]. Lowry claims in 'Sestina in a Cantina' [CP, #127, 15] that "The mind is like that sparkling greenhouse ocean".

The 1940 Volcano [256; UBC 26-2, 4 (a pencilled insert)] reads: "It reminds me of Maeterlinck's greenhouse in the forest." This is at the beginning of the chapter, but the earliest revisions replace it at the end. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) created strange "dramas of inaction", wherein symbolic figures walk like somnambulists across a dim landscape, and death is evernear; but the reference is to his poem, 'The Hothouse', which begins, "A hothouse deep in the forest's heart", and ends with a group of sick folk halted amid the meadows: "My God, my God, when shall we feel the rain / And the snow, and the wind, in this close house of glass?" Another pencilled inset [UBC WT 1-3, 18] calls it a broken greenhouse in the "Jardín Xicotencatl" and refers to Chapter II; in later revision [UBC 31-2, 1] the Arena Tomalín is located "frente Jardín Xicotencatl".

279.3 Cradle Mountain.

A 5,069 foot mountain in northwestern Tasmania that gives its name to the Cradle Mountain Scenic Reserve; the geography is not exact.

El Jardín Xicotancatl

279.4 El Jardín Xicotancatl: only weeds lived in the greenhouse.

A reminder of an earlier hint of conflict [#52.4], and Mariana's deserted garden [#74.1].

279.5 the little boat.

In Lowry's short story, 'The Bravest Boat', a small wooden boat, set adrift years before, has brought two lovers together and has become an image of love that, against almost impossible odds, has survived life's storms.

280.1 wild tripthongs.

More accurately, triphthongs. In linguistics, the combining of three vowels in a single syllable; here, presumably, three different notes of a bell combining in one wild peal.

280.2 Their shadows crawled before them in the dust.

A hint of T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land':

The insolent shadow of the bicycle wheel sweeping past is a further assertion of the Wheel of the Law and inevitable necessity [see #218.2].

280.3 an old lame Indian was carrying on his back ... another poor Indian.

The Consul, weighed down by his own burden of guilt (as Aeneas beneath Anchises or Sinbad beneath the old man of the sea), experiences at this moment an epiphany of hopelessness as he gazes on the old Indians. Lowry comments ['LJC', 81]: