[Vwoolf] "Mrs. Dalloway" cruxes (cruces?)

[Stuart N. Clarke]

As a welder, it would not have been particularly odd for my father to have been carrying a “roll of lead piping”* in Bond Street on a Wednesday in June 1923: A. N. Clarke, Arthur Clarke, Nobby Clarke, or, probably in the 1931 census, Clarke, Arthur N. (“How many rooms are in your dwelling?” “Bloody cheek!  It’s none of their business.  I’m not answering that.”).  I have always been attached to my middle initial, but that’s a bit unusual in the UK (no Ulysses S. Grants for us!).

As for the name(s), the CUP MD used our old chums the “Oxford Names Companion” (or a variation thereof; there is a new edn with bells and whistles, but I haven’t really looked into it, virtually): Watkiss comes from Watt, a short form of Walter.  J. Arthur Prufrock is suggested.  I may be wrong, but Edgar sounds a little middle class for the late 19th C, but you could always have called him Ed.

CUP doesn’t annotate the accent crux, or the date crux, or the who’s-in-the-car crux, or the roll-of-lead-piping crux.

I have written a little article discussing the possibility of the Queen in the car, which may get into the May 2021 “Virginia Woolf Bulletin”.  Of course, we will never really know who’s in the car.

*As an ignorant welder’s son, I ask: What *is* a roll of lead piping?  I know what lead piping is = a pipe made of lead (my father might carry it, ready to weld onto another pipe, etc.).  I also know what a roll of lead is, e.g. for roofing flashing (my father wouldn’t carry it, I think, as welding isn’t involved – on the other hand, you might well use a blowtorch to seal, in which case . . . ).

Stuart 
(Day 251)

From: Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf 
Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 9:52 AM
To: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] "Mrs. Dalloway" crux

My Irish speaking colleague (from Belfast but studied in Dublin) writes: "Well, the name doesn't sound Irish, even remotely. And if it's said humorously, could it not be a mock-Irish accent? But if I say it out loud, it definitely sounds North Dublin."

Watkiss is being humorous, so presumably may well be imitating someone or something. I can’t see why he would imitate a Black Country dialect, but he might well imitate posh, or a stage Irish (mock-Irish as my colleague has it) that was conventionally used for humorous effect.

Another friend says that "it’s a bit like Laurence Fox imitating a working-class accent." I think he means that VW is stepping outside her linguistic / social comfort zone here.

What about Watkiss's middle initial? Is this (a) Woolf or her narrator mocking his pretentious way of referring to himself, or (b) his wish to be known by a name that suggests importance, or (c) his own jokey way of referring to himself as if he were important (he knows he is not)?

Incidentally, are we to presume (given the end of the novel) that it IS the Prime Minister's car?


Jeremy H



On 22.11.2020 17:53, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:

  Edgar J. Watkiss, with his roll of lead piping round his arm, said audibly, humorously of course: "The Proime Minister's kyar."

  Leaving aside the ramifications and peculiarities of his name, what is his accent?  This has subconsciously bothered me for years.  It has been suggested that it is Irish.  “Proime” sounds Southern Irish; alternatively, very Birmingham to me.  Is “kyar” Irish?   It doesn’t sound like any accent I can readily think of.  

  Woolf wrote in “Memories of a Working Women’s Guild” (1930):

  “to deride ladies and to imitate, as some of the speakers did,
  their mincing speech and little knowledge of what it pleases them to
  call ‘reality’ is not merely bad manners, but it gives away the whole
  purpose of the Congress, for if it is better to be a working woman
  by all means let them remain so and not claim their right to undergo
  the contamination of wealth and comfort.”  (E5 182)

  If he says it “humorously”, then is he perhaps parodying upper-class speech?

  Stuart



   
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Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim
Norway

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