The Country of the Blind and other Selected Stories Page 51

  THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

  1. Chimborazo: Volcano in Equador. This sentence foreshadows ‘Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, / Took me by the hand’, lines from the poem ‘Romance’ in The Hunter (1916) by W. J. Turner (1889–1946).

  2. Mindobamba: And ‘Parascotopetl’ and ‘Arauca’ later, are fictional mountains. Quito, however is the capital of Ecuador, and Yaguachi is a town in southern Ecuador on the river Guayas, north of Guayaquil, the country’s main port. Wells is mixing fictional and real places to create the scene for his imaginary country.

  3. old Peru: The Incas, who ruled most of Peru and Ecuador at the time of the conquest by Francisco Pizarro (1478–1541). They were known for their architecture and command of agriculture, and the highly developed political and religious organization made somewhat mysterious by their failure to develop writing.

  4. Matterhorn: Mountain in the Alps on the borders of Switzerland and Italy. During the nineteenth century it became a favourite of climbing expeditions, and because of its difficulty was not ascended until 1865.

  5. ‘In the Country… is King’: A proverb dating back to at least the sixteenth century.

  6. Medina-saroté: There may be a meaning in this name. ‘Medina’ (Arabic) means ‘city’ and is a Spanish place-name and surname. Sarote or Sarotte is a rare variant of Sarah (‘Princess’ in Hebrew). Medina-saroté could therefore mean ‘Princess of the City’.

  THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS

  1. Benjamin Constant, to Badama: Ship either named after the French politician and novelist (1767–1830), or after the Brazilian city named after him. Badama is fictional as are most of the other place names (although there is a Badema in the African country of Guinea). There is a Parahyba or Paraíba river in Brazil which runs through the state of Rio de Janeiro.

  2. Sambo: The (now) offensive term ‘Sambo’ may have come from the Spanish ‘zambo’ (bandy-legged) applied to a person of mixed race.

  3. a different sort of French: Partly a joke about the state of language teaching in Britain: in Southport, Holroyd may have experienced rigid and narrow lessons. But both he and da Cunha have French as a second language and communication would not automatically have been easy.

  4. Saüba: The South American sauba or umbrella ant, referred to earlier as the ‘leaf-cutting ant’, which devastates areas of the forest, is the source for the ants in this story.

  5. Capuarana Extension Railway: A railway line opened in Brazil in 1854, but in 1898 a British company took over and extended the Brazilian railway system.

  THE DOOR IN THE WALL

  1. North-West Passage: The discovery of a passage around Canada through to the Pacific Ocean and Asia was the dream of many nineteenth-century explorers.

  2. Crawshaw major: It was customary when two brothers attended the same public school for the elder to be ‘Major’ (Latin, ‘greater’) and the younger ‘Minor’ (lesser).

  3. counting Stonehenge: Many stone circles are associated with legends to the effect that one can never count the stones and get the same answer twice.

  4. Tenants’ Redemption Bill: A fictional bill, but reminiscent of the turbulent politics of the time, particularly around the question of employment. 1906, the year of the story’s publication, was notable for a massive Conservative Party defeat by the Liberals, aided by the electoral rise of the Labour Party.

  5. Gurker and Ralphs: Representing political leaders of the day: presumably ‘Gurker’ is the Prime Minister.

  6. Westminster Gazette: Liberal Newspaper published from 1893 until 1928, when it was merged with the Daily News.

  THE WILD ASSES OF THE DEVIL

  1. anterior equator: I.e. his stomach.

  2. King Edward: Edward VII (1841–1910), who reigned from 1901.

  3. Kipling: Rudyard Kipling (see note 9 to ‘The Moth’) with whom Wells at times had something of a rivalry for the popular market.

  4. went to the bell: Middle-class houses were equipped with a system of bells to summon servants.

  5. a stokehole trick: Picked up among his fellow stokers in the furnace-rooms of the steamships (but Hell, of course, is also a location famous for furnaces).

  6. a pointed top to his ear: See note 4 to ‘A Story of the Stone Age’.

  7. Idylls of Theocritus: The pastoral poems of the Greek poet (c. 310–250 BC).

  8. flowers of sulphur: The fine powder obtained by heating sulphur and allowing the vapours to condense.

  9. Via Dolorosa: (Latin, ‘The Way of Grief’). The name of a street in Jerusalem, traditionally the route taken by Jesus on his way to his crucifixion.

  10. W. E. Gladstone: William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98), Liberal Prime Minister in four governments. He finally resigned as leader in 1894 over the rejection of his bill for Home Rule for Ireland.

  11. Sir Edward Carson: (1854–1935), Irish Unionist leader who campaigned against Home Rule for Ireland in the years before the First World War, threatening Protestant resistance in Ulster and establishing the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force. He also took a leading part in Oscar Wilde’s disastrous libel action against the Marquis of Queensberry in 1895.

  12. If you went inside—: Wells presented a Utopian underground city of the future, free from germs carried in the open air, in Things to Come, the film based upon The Shape of Things to Come (1933).

  13. Jaeger’s: Clothing store in London’s West End, established in 1884 to specialize in ‘healthy’ clothing from wool and other animal fibres, rather than cotton or linen.

  A.S.

  * ‘Remarks on a Recent Revision of Microlepidoptera’, Quart. Journ. Entomological Soc.,6 1863.

  † ‘Rejoinder to Certain Remarks’, etc. Ibid. 1864.

  ‡ ‘Further Remarks’, etc. Ibid.