The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc Part 6

38 2 SO SCENICAL, ETC.: De Quincey's love for effects of this sort appears everywhere. Cf. the opening paragraphs of the _Revolt of the Tartars_, Ma.s.son's ed., Vol. VII; Riverside ed., Vol. XII.

39 4 JUS DOMINII: "the law of ownership," a legal term.

39 14 JUS GENTIUM: "the law of nations," a legal term.

39 30 "MONSTRUM HORRENDUM," ETC..: _aeneid_, III, 658. Polyphemus, one of the Cyclopes, whose eye was put out by Ulysses, is meant. Cf. _Odyssey_, IX, 371 et seq.; _aeneid_, III, 630 _et seq_.

40 1 ONE OF THE CALENDARS, ETC.: The histories of the three Calenders, sons of kings, will be found in most selections from the _Arabian Nights_. A Calender is one of an order of Dervishes founded in the fourteenth century by an Andalusian Arab; they are wanderers who preach in market places and live by alms.

40 10 AL SIRAT: According to Mahometan teaching this bridge over Hades was in width as a sword's edge. Over it souls must pa.s.s to Paradise.

40 12 UNDER THIS EMINENT MAN, ETC.: For these two sentences the original in _Blackwood_ had this, with its addition of good De Quinceyan doctrine: "I used to call him _Cyclops Mastigophorus_, Cyclops the Whip-bearer, until I observed that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent fly from a leader's head, upon which I changed his Grecian name to _Cyclops Diphrelates_ (Cyclops the Charioteer). I, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this remark from me as a _gage d'amitie_--that no word ever was or _can_ be pedantic which, by supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a chasm for the understanding."

41 1 SOME PEOPLE HAVE CALLED ME PROCRASTINATING: Cf. Page's (j.a.pp's) _Life_, Chap. XIX, and j.a.pp's _De Quincey Memorials_, Vol. II, pp.

45,47,49- 42 11 THE WHOLE PAGAN PANTHEON: i.e. all the G.o.ds put together; from the Greek _Pantheion_, a temple dedicated to all the G.o.ds.

43 2 SEVEN ATMOSPHERES OF SLEEP, ETC.: Professor Hart suggests that De Quincey is here "indulging in jocular arithmetic. The three nights plus the three days, plus the present night, equal seven." Dr. Cooper compares with this a reference to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. But it seems doubtful whether any explanation is necessary.

43 17 LILLIPUTIAN LANCASTER: the county town of Lancashire, in which Liverpool and Manchester, towns of recent and far greater growth, are situated.

44 (footnote) "Giraldus Cambrensis," or Gerald de Barry (1146-1220), was a Welsh historian; one of his chief works is the _Itinerarium Cambrica_, or Voyage in Wales.

47 2 QUARTERING: De Quincey's derivation of this word in his footnote is correct, but its use in this French sense is not common. De Quincey, however, has it above, p. 11.

49 8 THE SHOUT OF ACHILLES: Cf. Homer, _Iliad_, XVIII, 217 _et seq_.

50 10 BUYING IT, ETC.: De Quincey refers, no doubt, to the pay of common soldiers and to the practice of employing mercenaries.

52 1 FASTER THAN EVER MILL-RACE, ETC.: the change in the wording of this sentence in De Quincey's revision is, as Ma.s.son remarks, particularly characteristic of his sense of melody; it read in _Blackwood_, "We ran past them faster than ever mill-race in our inexorable flight."

52 15 HERE WAS THE MAP, ETC.: This sentence is an addition in the reprint. Ma.s.son remarks "how artistically it causes the due pause between the horror as still in rush of transaction and the backward look at the wreck when the crash was past."

53 18 "WHENCE THE SOUND," ETC.: _Paradise Lost_, Book XI, 11. 558-563.

54 3 WOMAN'S IONIC FORM: In thus using the word Ionic, De Quincey doubtless has in mind the character of Ionic architecture, with its tall and graceful column, differing from the severity of the Doric on the one hand and from the floridity of the Corinthian on the other. Probably he is thinking of a caryatid. Cf. the following version of the old story of the origin of the styles of Greek architecture in Vitruvius, IV, Chap. I (Gwilt's translation), quoted by Hart: "They measured a man's foot, and finding its length the sixth part of his height, they gave the column a similar proportion, that is, they made its height six times the thickness of the shaft measured at the base. Thus the Doric order obtained its proportion, its strength, and its beauty from the human figure. With a similar feeling they afterward built the Temple of Diana.

But in that, seeking a new proportion, they used the female figure as a standard; and for the purpose of producing a more lofty effect they first made it eight times its thickness in height. Under it they placed a base, after the manner of a shoe to the foot; they also added volutes to its capital, like graceful curling hair hanging on each side, and the front they ornamented with _cymatia_ and festoons in the place of hair.

On the shafts they sunk channels, which bear a resemblance to the folds of a matronal garment. Thus two orders were invented, one of a masculine character, without ornament, the other bearing a character which resembled the delicacy, ornament, and proportion of a female. The successors of these people, improving in taste, and preferring a more slender proportion, a.s.signed seven diameters to the height of the Doric column, and eight and a half to the Ionic."

55 3 CORYMBI: cl.u.s.ters of fruit or flowers.

55 28 QUARREL: the bolt of a crossbow, an arrow having a square, or four-edged head (from Middle Latin _quadrellus_, diminutive of _quadrum_, a square).

58 20 WATERLOO AND RECOVERED CHRISTENDOM! Cf. note 19 3.

61 20 THEN A THIRD TIME THE TRUMPET SOUNDED: There are throughout this pa.s.sage, as Dr. Cooper remarks, many reminiscences of the language of the Book of Revelation. Cf. this with Revelation viii. 10; cf. 61 28 with Revelation xii. 5, and 62 5 with ix. 13.

63 29 THE ENDLESS RESURRECTIONS OF HIS LOVE: The following, which Ma.s.son prints as a postscript, was a part of De Quincey's introduction to the volume of the Collective Edition containing this piece:

"'THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH.'--This little paper, according to my original intention, formed part of the 'Suspiria de Profundis'; from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic.

Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the actual execution.

"Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened instant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people whom I had no means of a.s.sisting, except in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even _that_ not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.

"Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. This scene is circ.u.mstantially narrated in Section the Second, ent.i.tled 'The Vision of Sudden Death.'

"But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams.

The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue.

This troubled dream is circ.u.mstantially reported in Section the Third, ent.i.tled 'Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.' What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of action and pa.s.sion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence,--this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared; all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of a.s.sociation, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which features at that time lay--1st, in velocity unprecedented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the government of a great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circ.u.mstantially in the First or introductory Section ('The Glory of Motion'). The three first were distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of the 'Dream-Fugue' which my censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. If not--if there be anything amiss--let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with a rainbow for showing, or for _not_ showing, a secondary arch.

So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features a.s.sociated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision--viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's horn, again--a humble instrument in itself--was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party."

JOAN OF ARC

This article appeared originally in _Taifs Magazine_ for March and August, 1847; it was reprinted by De Quincey in 1854 in the third volume of his _Collected Writings_. It is found in _Works_, Ma.s.son's ed., Vol.

V, pp. 384-416; Riverside ed., Vol. VI, pp. 178-215.

64 10 LORRAINE, now in great part in the possession of Germany, is the district in which Domremy, Joan's birthplace, is situated.

65 14 VAUCOULEURS: a town near Domremy; cf. p. 70.

65 28 EN CONTUMACE: "in contumacy," a legal term applied to one who, when summoned to court, fails to appear.

66 13 ROUEN: the city in Normandy where Joan was burned at the stake.

66 25 THE LILIES OF FRANCE: the royal emblem of France from very early times until the Revolution of 1789, when "the wrath of G.o.d and man combined to wither them."

67 5 M. MICHELET: Jules Michelet (1798-1874) is said to have spent forty years in the preparation of his great work, the _History of France_.

Cf. the same, translated by G. H. Smith, 2 vols., Appleton, Vol. II, pp. 119-169; or _Joan of Arc_, from Michelet's _History of France_, translated by O. W. Wight, New York, 1858.

67 8 RECOVERED LIBERTY: The Revolution of 1830 had expelled the restored Bourbon kings.

67 20 THE BOOK AGAINST PRIESTS: Michelet's lectures as professor of history in the College de France, in which he attacked the Jesuits, were published as follows: _Des Jesuites_, 1843; _Du Pretre, de la Femme et de la Famille_, 1844; _Du Peuple_, 1845. To the second De Quincey apparently refers.

67 26 BACK TO THE FALCONER'S LURE: The lure was a decoy used to recall the hawk to its perch,--sometimes a dead pigeon, sometimes an artificial bird, with some meat attached.

68 6 ON THE MODEL OF LORD PERCY: These lines, as Professor Hart notes, in Percy's Folio, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Vol. II, p. 7, run:

The stout Erle of Northumberland a vow to G.o.d did make, his pleasure in the Scottish woods 3 som_m_ers days to take.

68 27 PUCELLE D'ORLeANS: Maid of Orleans (the city on the Loire which Joan saved).

69 1 THE COLLECTION, ETC.: The work meant is Quicherat, _Proces de Cond.a.m.nation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_, 5 vols., Paris, 1841-1849. Cf. De Quincey's note.

69 21 DELENDA EST ANGLIA VICTRIX! "Victorious England must be destroyed!" Cf. _Delenda est Carthago_! "Carthage must be destroyed!"

_Delenda est Karthago_ is the version of Florus (II, 15) of the words used by Cato the Censor, just before the Third Punic War, whenever he was called upon to record his vote in the Senate on any subject under discussion.

69 27 HYDER ALI (1702-1782), a Mahometan adventurer, made himself maharajah of Mysore and gave the English in India serious trouble; he was defeated in 1782 by Sir Eyre Coote. Tippoo Sahib, his son and successor, proved less dangerous and was finally killed at Seringapatam in 1799.