I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated (19 page)

44.
never to
- From Shakespeare’s
Henry VIII
III
:2:
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, / That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, / More pangs and fears than wars or women have: / And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, / Never to hope again.

45
. Henry James (1843-1916) - American-born writer, regarded as a central figure of 19th-century literary realism.

45. William Dean Howells (183
7-1920) - American realist author and literary critic; nicknamed “The Dean of American Letters.”

45.
“Goo-Goo Eyes”
- Ref. to song “Just Because She Made Dem Goo-Goo Eyes” (1900), lyr. John Queen, mus. Hughey Cannon.

45. Maria Louise Pool (18
41-1898) - American author, pub. by
M
’s publisher Herbert S. Stone’s predecessor company, Stone
&
Kimball;
M
was unaware that Pool had died several years earlier; para. was del. in published ver.

46. Eugene Field, Sr. (1850-
1895) - American writer best known for his children’s poetry and humorous essays.

52.
plungers
- Gamblers.

52.
box rustlers
- Prostitutes who worked the curtained upper boxes of theatres.

52.
impossible women
- Prostitutes; there may also be some Lesbian signaling to the term.

52.
beer-jerkers
- Poss. bartenders, but perhaps loose women or prostitutes.

52.
biscuit-shooters
- Prob. waitresses, specifically Harvey Girls, who worked in the respectable railside dining establishments of Fred Harvey.

53.
four-in-hands
- Ref. to carriage with four horses and a single driver.

54.
grass widow
- Euph. for a not-respectably-single woman:
e.g.
divorced, separated, an ex-mistress, mother of an illegitimate child, or parted from husband for a protracted time.

54.
of sprouts
- Difficult, prolonged course of instruction or treatment.

56.
stalled ox
- From Proverbs 15:1
7:
Better
is
a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
(King James)

56.
among thieves
- From Luke 10:30, but
M
reverses gender:
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
(King James)

58.
little folding
- From Proverbs 6:10:
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep
(King James)

60. Nora Perry (1831-1896) - American journalist, poet, writer of children’s stories.

60.
with reluctant
- From Longfellow’s poem “Maidenhood” (pub. 1842):
Standing, with reluctant feet, / Where the brook and river meet, / Womanhood and childhood fleet!

60.
Hildegarde Graham
- Ref. to popular series of girls’ novels (1889-1897) by Laura E. Richards (1850-1943) known as
The Hildegarde Series
; neither the series nor any volume in it bears the title that
M
gives.

60.
What Katy Did
- Girls’ book by Susan Coolidge (1835-1905, pseud. of Sarah Chauncey Woolsey).

67.
are heavy
- From Matthew 10:28:
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
(King James)

67.
the waters
- From the first stanza of Charles Wesley’s influential hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (pub. 1740):
Let me to Thy bosom fly, / While the waters near me roll, / While the tempest still is high. / Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, / Till the storms of life be past; / Safe into the haven guide; / Oh receive my soul at last!

69.
little more
- From stanza 39 of Browning’s “By the Fireside” (written 1853):
Oh, the little more, and how much it is! / And the little less, and what worlds away! / How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, / Or a breath suspend the blood’s best play, / And life be a proof of this!

69.
the people
- From Job 12:2:
No doubt but ye
are
the people, and wisdom shall die with you.
(King James)

72.
Cashmere
- Common archaic term for Kashmir.
M
poss. read in Byron’s friend Moore (
cf
. n. 27 p 551):
Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, / With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave, / Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear / As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave
(from “Lalla Rookh”, pub. 1817) or the New England poet George Bancroft Griffith (18
41-?):
With its cincture of snows lies the wonderful plain / That the paladin formed when the dragons were slain; / ‘Tis the Hindoo’s delight; and the poets endear / By their songs of its beauty, the Vale of Cashmere
(from “The Vale of Cashmere,” apparent 1st pub.
Granite State Monthly
, Oct. 1881, p 17).

72.
Lethe
- In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of Hades’ five rivers; those who drank its waters forgot all.

72. Charles Kingsley (1819
-1875) - English university professor, priest, historian, novelist; poem has variant texts - ver. given here is that in the orig. printing.

75. Archibald C[lavering] Gunter (1847-19
07) - Popular American playwright and widely-read self-published author and magaziner.

75. Albert Ross (1851-1916, pseud. of Linn Boyd Porter) - American novelist.

76.
mere vile clay
- Not, evidently, a literary quotation.

78.
two thieves
- Poss. ref. to a set of Rembrandt drypoints of the subject in various stages of finish.

80.
deferred and
- From Proverbs 13:12:
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but
when
the desire cometh,
it is
a tree of life.
(King James)

81.
servant a
- From 2 Kings 8
:13:
And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?
M
may also have had the echo at 2 Samuel 9:8 in mind:
And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?
(King James)

81.
song of
- Poss. from
A Modern Ideal: A Dramatic Poem
- an early work (1886) by Sidney Royse Lysaght (1860-1941), an Irish writer who also worked in the iron industry:
The kind and wonderful voices, / They speak the truth of existence, / Truth, the wonder of wonders, / They show us the soul of all things, / They touch the shadow and semblance, / And set the reality free; / They sing the song of the world that is / To the music of what might be.

82. Charlotte Corday (1768-1793) - French patriot, assassinated revolutionary leader Marat while he bathed; was executed.

82.
If to do
- From Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice
I
:2:
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, / Chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages / Princes’ palaces.

86.
gall and
- Wormwood and gall are paired at numerous points in the Bible, but in the King James the phrase appears only in Deuteronomy 29:18:
lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood.

87.
and Haidee
- Beautiful Moorish-Greek girl who found Don Juan cast ashore, restored him to animation, and became his lover.

88.
timothy-grass
-
Phleum pratense
; European perennial grass that has spread through the
US
since Colonial times; important in some nutritious animal feeds,
e.g.
for horses and rabbits.

88-89.
health and
- From the hymn “Sweet the Moments, Rich in Blessing” (orig. James Allen, 1757, ed. Walter Shirley, 1770):
Sweet the moments, rich in blessing, / Which before the cross we spend, / Life and health and peace possessing / From the sinner’s dying Friend.

89.
winds with
- From Milton’s “Ode on the Nativity” (1629):
The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kiss’d
; “whist” is an archaic form of “quiet” or “silent.”

89.
blew, and
- From Matthew 7:25:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
(King James)

90.
nearer my
- From the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (1841) by the English poet Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805-18
48); based on Genesis 28:11-19.

91.
air was over
- From second stanza of the poem “Great, Wide, Beautiful, Wonderful World” by the English author, reporter, preacher, and renowned nursery-poet William Brighty Rands (182
3-1882):
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, / With the wonderful water round you curled, / And the wonderful grass upon your breast - / World, you are beautifully drest. // The wonderful air is over me, / And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree, / It walks on the water, and whirls the mills, / And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

93.
Dr. Johnson
- Samuel Johnson.

93.
Our Young
- Prominent children’s magazine; it merged with
St. Nicholas
in 1874, so the volume
M
was reading was decades-old.

93. J[ohn] T[ownsend] Trowbridge (1827-1916) - American author and editor; his Jack Hazard novels (1870s) were a popular boys’ series; one was
Doing His Best
(
c
. 1873)

94
.
Lucy
- From Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray - Or, Solitude” (1888):
You yet may spy the fawn at play, / The hare upon the green; / But the sweet face of Lucy Gray / Will never more be seen.

94.
are old
- Seventh stanza of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “You Are Old, Father William” in
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland
(1
865):
“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose / That your eye was as steady as ever; / Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose - / What made you so awfully clever?”

102.
the other
- From the refrain in the hymn “Rest for the Weary” by the Irish-born American professor and minister William Hunter (1811-1877
):
There is rest for the weary, / There is rest for you. / On the other side of Jordan, / In the sweet fields of Eden, / Where the tree of life is blooming, / There is rest for you.

102.
thorns
- From Matthew 7:16:
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
(King James)

105.
the beasts
- From Psalms 49:12:
Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.
(King James)

105.
brave thing
- As the ed. has located no earlier appearances, this phrase appears to be from
A Practical Grammar of the English Language
(1878) by Ohioan educator, schools commissioner, and writer Thomas Wadleigh Harvey (1821-?).

106.
cometh not
- A refrain in Tennyson’s poem “Mariana” (1830) about the char. in Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure
.

106.
The Mill on the Floss
- 1860 novel by George Eliot.

108.
sweet-fern
- Deciduous flowering shrub,
Comptonia peregrina
(monotyp.); leaves give pleasing odor when crushed; tends to grow in dry, sandy areas, esp. amid pines; native to eastern North America, extending west to Minnesota.

111
.
for bread
- From Luke 11:11:
If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?
(King James)