[Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
Jeremy Hawthorn
jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Tue Sep 18 03:08:56 EDT 2012
The "colonial" is presumably a man, and presumably white. The (old) OED
is not very helpful here, and has more on the word's American reference
pre-independence.
I suspect that a South African is unlikely as an Afrikaaner would
probably not be in a London pub and a South African with a British
background would probably not want to have a go at the British monarchy.
Ditto white settlers from the rest of Africa. A Canadian is possible,
but although I suggested it, a man from Quebec is much more likely to
want to be in Paris than in London. How likely it is that a Canadian not
from Quebec would be likely to insult the House of Windsor at this time
I'm not sure. An Anglo-Indian (if that is the term) would, if my
reading of Forster has any weight, be also be pretty unlikely to be
insulting the House of Windsor. There are other possibilities, but this
does leave Australia and New Zealand as the main options. I have a fuzzy
sense that republicanism was more of a live issue in Australia than New
Zealand at this time, but am prepared to be corrected. And Australians,
however unfairly, are still associated with (a) pubs and (b) speaking
their minds. (As Russell Crowe put it once it an interview I saw on TV -
"I like the occasional drink".)
Does Woolf use "Colonial" in this sense elsewhere? I find myself
wondering whether the word really was used at this time as a patronising
generaliser for all (white) inhabitants of any British colony, or
whether it rather served as a euphemism for those who came from a
particular colony or group of colonies. This is where corpus analysis
might be illuminating.
Jeremy
Den 17.09.2012 18:57, skrev Jean Mallinson:
> I have been following this discussion marginally and can't help
> interjecting that "refeened" does not at all describe the Quebecois,
> who regularly insult the Royal Family on their home ground. As a
> Canadian, I still cringe at the collective noun "a Colonial" , as
> though we were all the same, distinguished only by the fact that we
> are not "British". The Colonial might be "Canadian". A Canadian I know
> got into a fight in a pub in the UK decades later for insulting Lord
> Mountbatten -- in this instance because of the Dieppe Raid.
> Jean Mallinson
> On 9/17/2012 12:17 AM, Stuart N. Clarke wrote:
>> It seems to me significant that VW made the change from "a Colonial
>> insulted the Royal family" in "The Prime Minister" ("Complete Shorter
>> Fiction", 1989, App. B) to "a Colonial insulted the House of Windsor"
>> in "Mrs. Dalloway".
>> Stuart
>> *From:* Stuart N. Clarke <mailto:stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, September 16, 2012 1:29 PM
>> *To:* vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> <mailto:vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>> I too tend to think Australian. Perhaps the Quebecois are more
>> refeened, as Mrs Manresa would say (her grandfather may have been
>> "exported" to Tasmania). Rather than colonial republicanism, I was
>> thinking more along the lines of: "They're a load of bloody Krauts,
>> the whole lot of 'em".
>> Stuart
>> *From:* Jeremy Hawthorn <mailto:jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:55 PM
>> *To:* Stuart N. Clarke <mailto:stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com> ;
>> vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> <mailto:vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
>> *Subject:* RE: [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>> Hmm, not sure about that, Stuart. "In a public-house in a back street
>> a Colonial insulted the House of Windsor, which led to words, broken
>> beer glasses, and a general shindy ...". I find it hard to believe
>> that a comment along the lines of "They should never have changed the
>> name to Windsor, bloody silly name if you ask me" would evoke such a
>> response. More likely that it is Virginia who is being careful, not
>> wanting to state directly that anyone would insult the monarch. In a
>> posting a few years back I admitted that I always assumed that the
>> Colonial was an Australian, but he (presumably it is he) could also
>> have come from Quebec . . .
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> [vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] on behalf of Stuart N.
>> Clarke [stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com]
>> *Sent:* 16 September 2012 10:39
>> *To:* vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> *Subject:* [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>>
>> I think it's reasonable to assume that this is another wartime ref.
>> The colonial doesn't insult the monarchy but the "House of Windsor"
>> -- a madey-uppy name created in 1917 to try to reassure the public
>> that the Guelphs (as VW tended to call them) were really British.
>> For various reasons, this year has slipped out of my grasp. And I
>> was *so* looking forward to getting my hands on the Duke of Cambridge.
>> (No, not the new one.)
>> Stuart
>> *From:* Jeremy Hawthorn <mailto:jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:14 PM
>> *To:* vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> <mailto:vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>> Also in Mrs Dalloway, doesn't a "colonial" insult the House of Windsor?
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> [vwoolf-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] on behalf of Andrea
>> [andrea.adolph at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* 15 September 2012 21:17
>> *To:* vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>>
>> And now I see on Facebook that Persephone Books has bought and made
>> cushions from a fabric purchased at Charleston--it's called "Queen
>> Mary" and is a Duncan Grant print.
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Stuart N. Clarke
>> <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com
>> <mailto:stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Swoon . . .
>>
>> As I say, there's much more to be done. Princess Mary pops up in
>> "Mrs. Dalloway" as a symbol of the post-war world, because she is
>> "married to an Englishman".
>>
>> Stuart
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: Adolphe Haberer
>> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 4:42 PM
>> To: Stuart N. Clarke ; vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu
>> <mailto:vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Darlings, am I a snob?
>>
>>
>> If Stuart wants to include VW's fiction in his
>> research, there is a discreet and rather elegant
>> reference to the Royal Family in chapter V of
>> Jacob's Room:
>>
>> "The autumn season was in full swing. Tristan was twitching his
>> rug up
>> under his armpits twice a week; Isolde waved her scarf in miraculous
>> sympathy with the conductor's baton. In all parts of the house
>> were to
>> be found pink faces and glittering breasts. When a Royal hand
>> attached
>> to an invisible body slipped out and withdrew the red and white
>> bouquet
>> reposing on the scarlet ledge, the Queen of England seemed a name
>> worth
>> dying for."
>>
>> Ado
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We really must do more research on VW and the Royal Family.
>>
>> In "Street Haunting", when the narrator imagines being in
>> Mayfair, she concludes her reverie with "watching the moonlit
>> cat creep along Princess Mary's garden wall" (The Essays,
>> Vol. IV, p. 486).
>>
>> Princess Mary and her husband Lord Lascelles did indeed live
>> in Mayfair, in Chesterfield House -- "where the famous
>> letters were penned" (Ward, Lock Guide to London, 1934, p.
>> 129. It was on the corner of South Audley Street and Curzon
>> Street, and was demolished in 1937.
>>
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Princess_Royal_and_Countess_of_Harewood>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Princess_Royal_and_Countess_of_Harewood
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterfield_House,_Westminster>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterfield_House,_Westminster
>>
>> Another footnote is required.
>>
>> Stuart
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Adolphe Haberer
>> Professeur émérite, Université Lumière-Lyon 2,
>> 1, route de Saint-Antoine
>> F-69380 Chazay d'Azergues
>> tel & fax +33 (0)4 78 43 65 24
>> <tel:%2B33%20%280%294%2078%2043%2065%2024>
>> E-mail : <Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr
>> <mailto:Adolphe.Haberer at univ-lyon2.fr>>, <ado at haberer.fr
>> <mailto:ado at haberer.fr>>
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--
Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus professor
Department of Modern Foreign Languages
NTNU
7491 Trondheim
Norway
(00 47) 73596787 (NTNU)
(00 47) 72887602 (home
(00 47) 90181427 (cellphone)
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