idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable
From DANAHAY 41: Reference to a Victorian debate regarding the existence of intelligent life on Mars. See Wells's article "Intelligence on Mars" in the Saturday Review 8 (April 4, 1896), p. 345-46.
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a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water
From DANAHAY 41: Wells was interested in the microscope to the point where he visited a microscope factory for his article "Through a Microscope."
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Exhibition Road
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 229: "a spacious thoroughfare in South Kensington, London. Location of the Imperial College of Science, formerly the Normal School of Science (part of the University of London), where Wells studied under Thomas Henry Huxley."
healthy or unhealthy livers
From DANAHAY 145: "Wells himself suffered from liver problems."
the case.
GANGNES: The 1898 version of the novel adds two paragraphs here about the thoughts of "a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute" on Martian technology and anatomy. This is commonly thought to be a cheeky reference to Wells himself. See text comparison page.
Westminster to his apartments near Regent’s Park
GANGNES: Regent's Park is a large public park in the northern part of central London. It lies north of the Thames, and it would likely take the narrator's brother a little under an hour to walk there from the south, depending on where in Westminster he is and where his apartment is situated. Wells's final home was near Regent's Park.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 232: Regent's Park is "central London's largest park, containing the London Zoo and the Botanical Gardens. It extends north from Marylebone Road to Primrose Hill; and west from Albany to Grand Union Canal."
cyclists
From MCCONNELL 130 and 152: Cycling was extremely popular in the 1890s; the safety bicycle was first patented in 1884, but the patenting of the first pneumatic tire in 1888 made cycling comfortable and affordable. Wells was learning to ride the bicycle around the time that he wrote this novel.
learning to ride the bicycle
From MCCONNELL 130: Wells was also learning to ride a bicycle during this time.
Meryton assembly
"Where the militia regiment is quartered for a time." Meryton is an imaginary town located near Longbourn and Netherfield in Hertfordshire. (http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppjalmap.html)
— —
These dashes don't have any grammatical meaning. Instead, Austen was notorious for her erratic punctuation. These dashes are her way of strengthening the emotional impact of whatever she just wrote.
26th April, 1877,
It was on this same day, 26 April, that the Magdalen officers lost patience with Wilde’s absence and resolved that he be rusticated and required to complete a portion of work to a required standard before the beginning of the October term, or else risk his Demyship.
G.G. Ramsay
A professor of humanities from Glasgow, Ramsay met Wilde, Ward and Blair in Rome and acted as guide around the city.
I do not think this very ugly thing ought to be allowed to remain.
Wilde made a similar remark in a letter to his mother, evidently pleased with his discriminating insight.
our visits
Wilde’s letters but rarely refer to the first-person plural, although he was of course travelling with several companions. That he does so here is suggestive that the visits to sites associated with British literary lions may have been at the prompting of one of his companions.
Hunter
Wilde’s friend, Hunter Blair, converted to Catholicism in 1875.
the city of the laguna and to the island of Saint Lazarus, and the Armenian monastery there
This visit to San Lazzaro degli Armeni formed part of Wilde’s 1875 trip to Italy, also with Mahaffy, as well as with his friend William Goulding.
24 April, 1877
Wilde’s letter appears to have been rather hastily written, as the lack of any form of address suggests. The letter rollicks at times as a stream of consciousness, encapsulating Wilde’s enthusiasm for his new project notwithstanding his correspondent’s gentle disapproval. Wilde makes no mention of the thoughts of his fellow travelling companions on the project, which we can only assume did not go unnoticed, as the writing and rewriting of the first two chapters must surely have taken a good deal of time.
Mahaffy
In 1875, after his first year at Oxford, Wilde undertook a trip to Italy with his former professor from Trinity College, Dublin, Rev John Pentland Mahaffy. Their tour included Florence, Bologna, Venice, Padua, and Milan. The tour that might have ended in Rome was cut short by Wilde’s dearth of funds. The idea, however, did not leave Wilde. Having contemplated visiting the “Scarlet Woman” in the company of Oxford friends, Wilde eventually undertook the journey in 1877, after a wide-ranging trip, again with Mahaffy, including visits in late March to Genoa, Ravenna, Brindisi and Corfu. Tafani’s absence is unsurprising, given that Wilde was already in company, and that this trip ran into the start of the next Oxford term, a transgression for which Wilde was fined and rusticated.
d’Angleterre
Wilde, somewhat inexplicably, uses the French rather than the Italian to name the hotel in which he, Hunter Blair and William Ward stayed.
theory
Wilde kept long to this view, expressed by Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray regarding the connection between appearance and thought.
Signore Tafanito
It is difficult to know quite what to make of this correction by Wilde, or what it signifies regarding their relationship. Their prior correspondence, to which Wilde refers further on, may have shed light on this, but without that additional data, any interpretation would be only speculative.
I defy any painter to move and elevate me without my own consent and assistance
There is a Paterian element to this assertion that, although echoing Hawthorne’s Kenyon, is suggestive of Wilde’s emerging theories of aestheticism, and the role of art and spectator.
New England
Wilde jabs here, we may deduce, at Hawthorne himself, born in Massachusetts, whose novel Wilde interprets as overly certain and lacking in the romance and mystery of the Old World.
“I am quite serious, Donatello.”
The chapter ends rather abruptly here. It is unclear quite whether Wilde intended this, or whether he simply forgot to return to the end of this chapter after an interruption while travelling.
She liked him the better for being a clergyman, “for she must confess herself very partial to the profession”; and something like a sigh escaped her as she said it.
What is a clergyman? Jane Austen draws from her personal life in her novels pulling in her father’s job position. Clergyman in her novels a lot because it draws from her childhood of her father being one. Not only in Northanger Abby but also in Mansfield park its mentioned men to become clergymen. What is so significant to become of this position? According to Merriam-Webster a clergyman is defined as “a man who is a member of the clergy especially in a Christian church”. Breaking this down even more what does the word clergy mean? It means to be ordained in the church. The clergyman seems to be appear to be a minster who is a socialite among the wealthy. They would perform religious ceremonies in the Christian Church only but also were invited to socialize with the upper class at times.
Work Cited Miriam Webster.Com
I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.
The end of chapter 5 introduces a break from the novel in the form of a short essay on the value of novels. Given the additional mockery in this novel of the traditional fiction being written at that time, the narrator can be seen as the voice of Jane Austen herself.