Nor is it I who play the part,
But a shy spirit in my heart,
That comes and goes - will sometimes leap
From hiding-places ten years deep;
Or haunts me with familiar face,
Returning, like a ghost unlaid,
Until the debt I owe be paid.

Wordsworth seems to mean that what has lead him to write the poem is not his conscious self, but some memory or guilt from the past. The same line was an important pointer in the earlier book Stop Press:

"'You will also wonder', said the voice, 'where the Spider comes from.'
'From hiding places ten years deep,' murmured Holme."
("Rust Hall", 5:75 in 1958 Penguin edition.)

The Waggoner can be found at Bartleby.

The books Everard Raven offers Appleby: (1:7-8)

"Dr. Bossim's recent work on the Docetists"
"Stuttaford on the Monophysites"
"Spratt's History of the Royal Society"
"Swincer and Tiver on the Tyrannosaurus"

I haven't been able to find any record of these books or authors. Bossim appears to be an Hungarian name. The Docetists and the Monophysites were early (sixth-century) Christian heretics; neither sect believed that Jesus had a human nature as well as a divine nature. Everard also mentions books about "the Pelagians and the Gnostic Ebionites": the Pelagians were another group of heretics who didn't believe in original sin, and the Ebionites an earlier sect (second century) who saw Jesus as a prophet or spirit rather than God's son. (The Pelagian heresy is sympathetically discussed in Ellis Peters' Cadfael novel, The Heretic's Apprentice.)

"the good Fluellen when he came to compare Macedon and Monmouth" (1:9)

Shakespeare's Henry V. Captain Fluellen, comparing King Henry and Alexander the Great, says

I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons
between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations,
look you, is both alike. There is a river in
Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at
Monmouth ... and there is salmons in both. (Act 4, Scene 7)

Everard Raven: "the doggy letter … What the Grammarians were fond of calling litera canina." (1:9)

The only source I have so far found for this is John Aubrey's Brief Life of Milton, in which he quotes Dryen on the letter R: “litera canina - the dog-letter, a certain sign of a satirical wit”.

"'Much of it is published already.' Mr Raven took off his gold-rimmed glasses and held them some inches in front of a markedly long nose. 'The New Millennium Encyclopedia, edited by Everard Raven, with the Assistance of Many Scholars and Men of Science.'

'But I understood you to say that you were doing it all yourself?'

'As indeed I am. Our title-page, I fear, has been conceived according to the morality of merely commercial men - '" (1:10)

The phrase 'with the Assistance of Many Scholars and Men of Science' is from the title page of the Oxford English Dictionary. I noticed this quotation in Simon Winchester's book about the compiling of the OED, The Surgeon of Crowthorne (see it at Amazon). The OED has a site, but there's not much on it.

"The train might be a Hitchcock train having its existence only on a ribbon of celluloid - in which case the priest was doubtless a beautiful female spy in disguise. Or the train might be an Emmett train lurking between the leaves of Punch - which would mean that it was filled with demons masquerading as farmers and retired colonels, and that the permanent way led only up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen." (2:11)

Appleby may be thinking of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) - information from film buffs welcome.

Emmett train: this refers to the Punch cartoonist Rowland Emett (I think this is the correct spelling of his name) (1906-1990) who drew a series of cartoons about the fictitious Far Twittering and Oyster Creek Railway - I have still to track down one of these. Emett was also the designer of some of the machines in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

"Up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen" is from William Allingham's poem The Fairies, available at Bartleby through The Oxford Book of English Verse (1919).

"The idiot boy, of course, was straight out of Wordsworth." (2:11)

The most obvious source is Wordsworth's The Idiot Boy, published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Dalhousie University has the whole text of the collection online in facsimile, or you can access the poem itself at the University of Oregon.

"' ... But on what am I engaged here, Mr Appleby?' And Mr. Raven tapped his briefcase once more. 'A rifacciamento, sir; little more than a rifacciamento.'" (2:12)

I have found it difficult to discover what the word Everard Raven uses to refer to his dictionary means: Italian dictionaries have failed me. I have found two examples of the word in context. Thomas Love Peacock uses it in The Four Ages of Poetry, writing about the publication of Shelley's The Defence of Poetry: "Mrs. Shelley subsequently printed it from Mr. Hunt's rifacciamento, as she received it". It also appears in TH Huxley's Criticisms on "The Origin of Species, available at Gutenberg, where he quotes from P Flourens's Examination du livre de M. Darwin sur l'origine des especes: "Darwinism a 'rifacciamento' of De Maillet and Lamarck". In context, both uses seem to mean an inferior version. Google, however, suggests that I (and Innes) might mean rifacimento. This has also been a bit difficult to track down, but I have found it glossed as "recasting" in a description in the 1911 Encylopedia of Francesco Berni's poem Orlando, apparently a version of an earlier poem. This fits with Poe's notes on the poet Elizabeth Frieze Ellett - "Her articles are, for the most part, in the rifacimento way, and, although no doubt composed in good faith, have the disadvantage of looking as if hashed up for just so much money as they will bring." (EA Poe Society of Baltimore). Presumably this is the charge Everard lays against his Dictionary, but I'd welcome hearing from anyone who can clarify the word.

"'I believe,' said Appleby, 'that it was Dr. Johnson who held few pleasures to exceed that of driving through the country in a post-chaise with a pretty woman." (3:22)

From Boswell's Life of Johnson, 19th September 1777: 'If (said he), I had not duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman". Boswell's Life can be found online up to 1763 on Jack Lynch's Johnson page. Susan Eilenberg quotes the phrase in her review of Beryl Bainbridge's novel about Johnson, Thrale etc, According to Queeney.

Judith: "Leonardo da Vinci ... called painting a liberal art ... and he called sculpture a servile art ... " (3:23)

I haven't been able to track this one down. Suggestions welcome.

"'Been?' said Heyhoe. 'I mun eat my dinner.'

Heyhoe was so strikingly reminiscent of Caliban that this was an altogether appropriate opening line. The forehead was low and receding; the eyes were small, feral and deep-set beneath beetling brows; the mouth hung open in a species of rictus or fixed grimace." (3:19-20)

Caliban's third speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest starts 'I must eat my dinner,' I.ii.389.

Judith Raven: "if this were August, it would be altogether romantic. I should look back and dream of my wonderful policeman. Our delights, I should recall, were dolphin-like." (4:29)

From Cleopatra's eulogy on Antony in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra V.ii.88:

His delights
Were dolphin-like, they show'd his back above
The element they liv'd in.

"Ranulph had left no Moonstone - nor even an Uncle Silas." (5:37)

The Moonstone, thriller by Wilkie Collins, 1868.
Uncle Silas, gothic novel by Sheridan Le Fanu, 1864.

Judith Raven: ' ... You see, he [Ranulph Raven] had the reputation of being a sort of Sibyl ... Do you know the Sistine Chapel? I like the Delphic Sibyl best. But not so much as Jonah. Jonah's lovelier even than Adam, if you ask me.' (5:38)

In Greek mythology, Sibyls were female prophets and speakers for the Oracle. The ceiling frescoes of the Sistine Chapel were painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512. Reproductions of the paintings of Jonah and the Delphic Sibyl can be seen on Wayne State University's Sistine Chapel site. The Prophets and Sibyls page includes Jonah, and The Creation Panels include Adam.

"The clouds were clearing rapidly and behind them was the cold glitter of Orion and the Bear. Now lies the earth all Danæ to the stars. . . ." (5:38)

From a song in Tennyson's The Princess:

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: wake thou with me.

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now lies the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Judith Raven: ' ... consult the local squire [Ranulph Raven] as if he were a black and midnight hag ... ' (5:39)

From Macbeth's greeting to the witches, when he finds them making charms in a cave in Act IV of Macbeth: 'How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!' (IV.i.52). The three witches can be seen in an illustration from Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's source for Macbeth.

Walking through the snow, Appleby chants

"Sed iacet aggeribus niveis informis et alto/Terra gelu ..." (6:41)

This is a quotation from Vergil's Georgics 3:354-55. There is a translation of the whole poem at MIT's corpus of classical texts: I would translate this passage very roughly as

But shapeless snow-drifts and heavy frost cover the earth ...

More Vergil resources.

Judith Raven: "the family ... would all go ploutering round, you know, knocking up the countryside and saying we must be searched for" (6:41-7)

'Ploutering' appears to be a Scottish word meaning something like 'messing around'. In Hugh MacDonald's 1850s book Rambles Round Glasgow, he refers to boys in the river "ploutering about in the foamy water". Parliamo Scots?, a compilation of Scots words and phrases, says

"Plouter" (rhymes with doubter) - splash through or play with water or mud (a favourite pastime of children...) To "plouter about" is to do something in an aimless manner

If it's always been a Scottish word, it's unlikely that Judith Raven would know it: it must have slipped in from Innes's own Scottish vocabulary.

Still lost in the snow, Appleby comments to Judith Raven that:

"The delusive hospitality of your cousin mocks me across vast frozen distances like the banquets of the Barmecide." (6:43)

This is a reference to a story in the Arabian Nights of a prince who offered empty plates to a beggar, telling him they had food on them.

Judith Raven on her cousin: "Luke is much possessed by death." (6:47)

TS Eliot, first line of Whispers of Immortality (1920)

Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin

"'This place is too cold for hell ... Hell is murky,' said Luke Raven ... He folded his arms across his chest and glowered at his kinsfolk as if through some mephitic mist" (7:47-8)

'Hell is murky' is from Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's mutterings in her sleep, V.I.32.

mephitic: poisonous, foulsmelling - from Late Latin mephiticus, pestilential.

"'Heyhoe,' said Luke, 'doth inherit the vasty hall of death.'" (7:49)

From the last stanza of Matthew Arnold's poem Requiescat:

Her cabin'd, ample Spirit,
It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of Death.

In the hall of Dream Manor "each Mongolian had a glass case to himself, and these were disposed in a quincunx pattern all over the available floor space." (7:51)

quincunx: five objects arranged in a rectangle, with another object in the centre.

"Ranulph's third brother, Adolphus, a person of some talent who had joined the Romish Communion and become a bishop in partibus, but who was later converted on his deathbed to the religious system of the Zend-Avesta" (7:51)

in partibus: an abbreviation for In Partibus Infidelium, in the regions of the unbelievers, a phrase used in the Roman Catholic church to describe bishops whose titles come from historical sees no longer existing; for instance, the bishop of Bethlehem in partibus. In 1882 the term was officially replaced by 'titular bishop'. For more information see the religious reference site Urday.com.

the Zend-Avesta: the religious book of the Zoroastrians or Parsees, formerly from Persia but now mostly living in India. The Catholic Encylopedia dates the Avesta in its present form to the fourth century AD. Afghanland.com calls it "the most difficult religious document in existence". There is a description of the theology of Zoroastrianism at The Divine Life Society's site, from which it appears that it is a monotheistic religion requiring its adherents to live a virtuous life. See Religious Tolerance.org for more information.

"A companion piece [to the Rape of Europa], in which a bull and a glossy lady were yet more inextricably entangled both with each other and with two astoundingly contorted young men, Appleby identified provisionally as a Punishment of Dirce. He was looking round with some apprehension for a Pasaphae ... " (7:52)

In Greek mythology Dirce was the wife of the usurping king of Thebes, Lycus. She enslaves the previous queen, Antiope, who escapes to Mount Cithaeron, and, meeting there her sons by Zeus, asks them to help her, and they tie Dirce to a wild bull who drags her until she dies. Theodore Raven's sculpture is probably based on the first century Roman sculpture, known as the Farnese Bull, in the Naples Archaeological Museum. A more detailed version of the story is at the site of the Archaeological Superintendency of Naples and Caserta, and a picture of the sculpture is at the University of Texas.

'Pasaphae' probably refers to Queen Pasaphae, the wife of King Minos, who was cursed by Poseidon, as Dr Richard Ingersoll explains:

"Minos, famously rich but also stingy, was required by Poseidon to sacrifice a white bull, but instead sacrificed a less prestigious black bull. The god put a curse on his wife Pasaphae, making her lust for intercourse with a bull. Daedelus's first job was to rig up a brace for the queen to have union with the bull, and his next job was to devise a hiding place for their monstrous offspring, the minotaur."

There seem to be no known visual representations of Pasaphae: it appears that Innes/Appleby is imagining the most over-the-top and unrestrained sculpture he can.

"'Time with a Gift of Tears,' said Luke. 'And Grief with a Glass that ran.' ...
'Pleasure, with Pain for leaven,' ...
'Summer, with Flowers that fell.' ...
'Remembrance, fallen from Heaven.' ...
'Madness risen from Hell.'" (7:53)

As Luke says 'with gloomy modesty' (7:54), this is Swinburne - a section spoken by the Chorus in Atalanta in Calydon. This excerpt and the complete poem are online at the University of Toronto. An audio file of the first speech by the Chorus can be found at Duquesne University, but as this is 3.8 MB I haven't tested it.

Robert Raven: 'Of course, he did very little actual carving himself. Nineteenth-century sculptors didn't. At least one scarpellino was employed chipping away full-time. ... ' (7:56)

scarpellino: Italian, 'stone-cutter', from scarpel meaning chisel.

"Luke too had placed himself in front of Nausicaa - whose innocent exhibition of les tetons et les fesses he seemed to view without ... carnal curiosity." (7:56)

les tetons et les fesses: French, 'breasts and buttocks'.

Everard Raven on Roger Raven: 'A little collection of translations from Horace and Martial which he put out was extremely well-received. Jowett of Balliol was delighted with it.' (7:57)

Benjamin Jowett, 1817–93, was lecturer in Greek and Master of Balliol College, Oxford (1870–93). See Robert Fulford's review of Noel Annan's book about Oxbridge dons, and Martin Ray's essay "Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Benjamin Jowett". Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues, with his introduction, are online at About.com.

Mark Raven: "' ... Luke has a tombstone just like that - thanks to an unknown donor. My notion is that he always longed for one, and so he sent it to himself - like Gub-Gub.'

'Gub-Gub?' said Appleby.

'Gub-Gub was Doctor Dolittle's pig.'" (8:58-9)

Indeed he is, in the children's books by Hugh Lofting. The first of these was The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920). I haven't checked in which book Gub-Gub first appears or the episode Mark Raven mentions - I recall it as Gub-Gub sending himself a fruit cake. See Christopher Lofting's Puddleby-on-the-Marsh pages (plagued by pop-up ads). The first two Dr. Dolittle books are available via Project Gutenberg.

"Luke ... was plainly sunk in sombre meditation on the furthest processes of vermiculation and decay" (8:59)

vermiculation: worm-like movement, worm-like carvings, or (as here), the state of being worm-eaten.

Mark Raven describing the sculpture of Nausicaa: 'She and her girlfriends ought to be washing King Alcinous' vests and pants. But here they are, just washing themselves.'

Everard: 'I seem to recall ... that Homer, when he tells the story of Odysseus' arrival on Scheria -' (8:60)

Homer's Odyssey, Book VI. Nausicaa, the daughter of King Alcinous of Scheria, is told by Minerva to take her clothes to the shore to wash them. Odysseus wakes after having been shipwrecked and sees Nausicaa and her maids. See Samuel Butler's translation. Everard, before being interrupted, may be about to say that Minerva definitely tells Nausicaa to wash her own clothes, in preparation for her possible marriage, not her father's.

I haven't found any sculptures of Nausicaa, but Rubens has a painting of Odysseus and Nausicaa (1619) at Olga's Gallery, and there is another by Josef Piper (1940) at Geoff Walden's Third Reich in Ruins (page takes some time to load, use CTRL+F to search for Nausicaa).

"At intervals the long line of the balustrade was strengthened by massive vacant pedestals. And upon one of these an elderly man, orthodoxly attired after the manner of the country gentry, stood posed in the dramatic attitude of the Marsyas of Myron." (9:70)

Myron was a fifth century BC Greek sculptor, whose sculpture of Athena and Marsyas is known from copies: see it at the College of the Holy Cross. It shows Athena discovering Marsyas playing the flute, which she had invented and then thrown away on deciding she looked ridiculous playing it. Narzil's Transformations page has Robert Graves's retelling of the story, and a translation of Ovid's version can be found at Auburn University. Myron is also said to have created a sculpture of a cow, which may have some relevance here.

Sir Mulberry: "Did you ever read of the Stone Men of Malekula? Identify themselves with their own statuary." (10:71)

This must be a reference to John Layard's 1942 anthropological book The Stone Men of Malekula: Vao. I have not yet got hold of this book, but something of the culture he describes can be found in chapter 7 of Kurt von Meier's book available online. Malekula is part of the island group Vanuatu in the Pacific, north of New Zealand and east of Australia. AdventureVanuatu is a tourism site with information about the area's history.

"The only occupant [of the sty] at present was a vast and lethargic sow; three Gothic courts were hers" (10:71)

Wordworth, The Prelude, Book 3:46-48, describing his Cambridge college:

The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure

"with features so extremely like a hare's that to the urban mind she would have appeared natural only if hung upside down with her nose in a little silver can" (10:72)

See Mrs Beeton's recipe for jugged hare at Amy Stephenson's Recipes of the Dammed.

"Gregory nodded vigorously. 'It was grandfather,' he said, 'that started me off. ...Gave me the Wonder Book of Trains. After that I never looked back.'" (11:82)

Presumably based on The Wonder Book of Railways, ed H Golding, 9th edition 1929. This was a fairly common format for children's non-fiction at the time: see The Wonder Book of Chemistry (1923) and The Wonder Book of Engineering Wonders (1928). An actual Wonder Book of Trains was published in the USA in 1957, written by Norman Carlisle, who had also published the Modern Wonder Book of Trains and Railroading in 1946, the year after Appleby's End. I have not yet checked whether H Golding's book has the picture of an American snow-plough referred to by Gregory Grope (11:83).

"Appleby shook his head solemnly. 'A presentiment, inspector. Shall I be turned into a waxen Kurd? Or, puzzling over the case, shall I be made marble with too much conceiving - as happened, you will recall, to Milton when he started reading Shakespeare?'" (12:86)

Milton's sonnet On Shakespeare:

What needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hollowed relics should be hid
Under a stary-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

Appleby: "I suspect that theology disapproves of people imagining themselves cows - "
Inspector Mutlow: "There was Nebuchadnezzar" (14:102)

The Old Testament, Daniel 4:33.

Mutlow seemed somewhat awed. 'It shows that as often as you step on a train or a bus you just don't know. In the midst of life - '" (16:116)

From the Committal section of the Burial Rite in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: 'In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord. Who for our sins art justly displeased?' This is online at Lynda Howell's 1662 Book of Common Prayer site, which also has some interesting information about variant editions. There are no UK sites with the text online because of copyright legislation.

Judith "looked at the statue before them in evident distaste. 'My salad days,' she said, 'when I was green in judgement ... '" (17:123)

For a second time (see note to 4:29), Judith Raven is quoting Antony and Cleopatra (I.vi.73-5):

My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then!

Cleopatra is thinking about her feelings for her former love, Octavius Caesar.

Appleby: 'And they would be singing? Something like "Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble"?' (19:135)

Another (see note to 5:39) reference to Macbeth. This is the witches' chant from IV.i.12-13.

Luke Raven: 'O what a tangled web we weave - '' (21:145)

From Walter Scott's Marmion: 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,/When first we practise to deceive!' (XVII.27-8). The whole poem is at Project Gutenberg (allow a couple of minutes for the page to load). JR Pope (1909–1991) updated this in his epigram A Word of Encouragement:

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
But when we've practised quite a while
How vastly we improve our style.

Return to the Michael Innes (J I M Stewart) site.