The Holyhead Mail ~~ Mail-coach route, also called the Irish Mail,
between London and Holyhead (port on the Isle of Anglesey, Wales, for
sailings to Dublin, Ireland), much of this route being along Watling
Street, a Roman road, later denominated - less poetically - the A5.
Four inside passengers ~~ As distinct from ‘outsides,’ who would have
seats on the roof or alongside the driver.
‘Remember the coachman’ ~~ By custom, passengers ‘remembered’ each
driver on the completion of his stage with a gratuity, the suitable
amount being - also by custom - fairly well understood.
Headlong Hall ~~ Alongside Llyn (lake) Peris, the southerly and further
inland of two lakes in the Vale of Llanberris, stand a tower and other
remains of 13th-Century Dolbadarn Castle, founded by Llywelyn
ap-Iorworth (son of Iorworth), 1194-1240 (also known as Llewelyn
the Great, or Leonlinus Magnus), Prince of Wales, Prince of
Aberffraw, Lord of Snowdonia: coincidentally cited by Miss Brindle-Mew
Ap-Headlong in the Proposals scene as being the ancestor of Miss Nanny
Glyn-Du, a lady she has earmarked as a desirable match for her nephew
the Squire. Owain Goch (the Red), an unsuccessful claimant to
succeed Llywelyn ap-Iorworth, was imprisoned in Dolbadarn Castle. In
Chapter 8, Mr Milestone the ambitious landscape gardener is
particularly interested in a ruined tower, overlooking the lake, in the
grounds of Headlong Hall.
Cadwallader ~~ or Cadwaladr, about 600 AD, the last Welsh king to claim
supremacy over all Britain; his banner was the Welsh red dragon (the
emblem adopted nine centuries later by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond,
in his successful campaign against Richard III).
In Chapter 9 the Sexton claims that the largest skull in his stock-pile
is Cadwallader’s; Mr Escot readily concurs with this claim, and uses
the huge skull first to arouse Mr Cranium's curiosity and covetousness,
and then in the Proposals scene to bargain successfully with him for
the
hand of Mr Cranium's daughter Cephalis.
The alleged absence from Oxford University of philosophers and men of
taste ~~ Peacock made another jibe against Oxford in Crotchet Castle
(1831), having one of his characters describe it as a seat of learning,
but on the same principle as ‘once a captain, always a captain,’
alluding to the convention that entitled inactive officers to continue
to be styled according to their service rank.
Improvements ~~ Such as the roads, with better construction methods
initiated by John Macadam and Thomas Telford that provided a more
comfortable ride, at higher speed.
The first three decades of the 19th Century were the heyday of the
coaching roads; but in the 1830s they could not compete with the new,
rapidly spreading railways.
Chapter 2. The Squire; the Breakfast.
Not half breakfasted ~~ Mail-coaches kept to a strict schedule, with
very brief (and, according to many passengers, hardly adequate) halts
for refreshment.
Excerpted from one of the Jorrocks sketches by R S Surtees in the New
Sporting Magazine: ‘Now harkee, waiter, there's the guard blowing
his horn, and we have scarcely had a bite apiece,’ cries Mr Jorrocks,
as that functionary sounded his instrument most energetically in the
passage, ‘blow me tight if I stir.’
Capel Cerig ~~ About three miles past Betys-y-Coed, where Telford had
just built (in 1815) the cast-iron Waterloo Bridge to carry the road
for the Irish Mail.
Chapter 3. The Arrivals.
Post-chaise ~~ A carriage for hire, which in a remote place like this
might very likely be in a state of neglect and disrepair.
From Travel in England, by Thomas Burke: ‘Lord William Lennox
describes what he calls ‘hack-chaises’ as no fair substitute for one's
own. They were not very well hung on their springs; the windows seldom
fitted, but rattled all the way along like a dice-box; the floor was
covered with enough straw to hold a covey of partridges; and though the
vehicles were light and ran smoothly, there was the trouble of
transferring your luggage to a new one at every stage.’
Putney and Kew ~~ On the south-western outskirts of London, alongside
the Thames. To Dr Gaster, they
represent a tamed, civilised, safe environment, far from the mountains.
Great capabilities ~~ Lancelot Brown the landscape gardener was
nick-named ‘Capability’ Brown for his habitual use of that term when
remarking on the suitability of a gentleman’s estate for Brown's style
of ‘improvement.’
Chapter 4. The Grounds.
The first part of this chapter, the tour of the grounds, is constructed
upon quotations from various sources, providing an insight into the
differing ideas in that period about principles of garden design.
Ship-of-the-line ~~ Royal Navy warships were rated according to size
and armament. The top category was Ship-of-the-line, fit to sail in the
front line against the enemy. The Navy played an important role during
the lengthy Napoleonic Wars, at that time recently concluded. Some of
these massive warships were de-commissioned, and the rest became
obsolescent as steam power was introduced. William Turner’s painting The
Fighting Temeraire towed to her last berth, with the old hulk and
the diminutive tugboat with its plume of black smoke, is a touching
tribute to the sailing ships of the Navy.
Chapter 7. The Walk.
Walk to Tremadoc ~~ A remarkable walk, with some poetic licence:
twenty-or-so miles each way, through the mountains, plus a stop for
lunch and a tour of the manufactories, and yet getting back in time to
witness the Squire’s attempt to re-model the landscape. Peacock’s
description of the route, however, indicates that he knew this region.
(In Crotchet Castle the house-guests journey by water along the
Thames and into the canal system, reaching the Vale of Llangollen; and
Peacock places some of the action in Merioneth, and in his notes he
identifies one of the places he used in that book.)
Embankment ~~ William Alexander Madocks, a Lincolnshire MP, built two
embankments (the first, smaller, one in 1805), to drain the mud-flats
of the estuary to make grazing land. At the time of Headlong Hall
the second was nearing completion. He founded Tremadog (or Tremadoc) - the
town of Madog - and Porthmadog, towns he modestly named after the
12th-Century Prince Madog and himself, with hopes of serving a
London-to-Dublin coaching and shipping route, which however did not
materialise. T E Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) was born in Tremadog
in 1888.
The giant Wyddfa ~~ Yr Wyddfa (‘the burial place’), summit of
Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales.
The local tradition of the fiddler who never returned from the
labyrinth ~~ The author enhances his description of the landscape with
this anecdote. Binham Priory, Norfolk, has a closely similar legend,
according to which a fiddler (with his dog) entered a tunnel at the
priory, to explore its supposed route to Walsingham, playing his fiddle
so that those on the surface could track his movements; at a place
consequently named Fiddler's Hill the music abruptly ceased, and the
fiddler was never seen again, although his dog did show up, terrified.
Other similar legends belong to Culross, Fife (a piper); and Richmond
Castle (a drummer).
To conclude this topic, Peacock has Mr Jenkison suggest that to
determine the fiddler's fate, a second fiddler would need to re-trace
the route, an inspired comment that straddles the boundary between
logic and lunacy.
The remaining one wallows in all the redundancies of luxury ~~ An irony
here: nowhere is there an indication that any of these three
philosophers work for their living; they appear to be gentlemen of
leisure.
Chapter 11. The Anniversary.
Ferrymen of the Menai ~~ The Menai Strait separates the Isle of
Anglesey from the rest of Wales. In 1826 Telford built the iron Menai
Suspension Bridge; and in 1850 Robert Stephenson built a railway bridge
across the Strait.
