[Vwoolf] Fancy not knowing that!

Mon Apr 5 15:42:16 EDT 2021

Then there  is this passage from Lawrence's *The Trespasser*, which Woolf
read while on her honeymoon in Spain:

"The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating with
trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and stood
there panting—great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always amused by
the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased with this
scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was glad Helena was
not with him, for the streets would have irritated her with their coarse
noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the rabbits pop and hobble
along on the common at night; but the tearing along of the taxis and the
charge of a great motor-bus was painful to her. 'Discords,' she said,
'after the trees and sea.' She liked the glistening of the streets; it
seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for pavement, such pavement as drew
near to the pure gold streets of Heaven; but this noise could not be
endured near any wonderland."

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 12:06 PM Elizabeth F. Evans via Vwoolf <
vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

> Eleanor is perhaps too modest to mention it, but her wonderful essay,
> “Public Transport in Woolf’s City Novels: The London Omnibus,” appears
> (pp.  31-39) in *Woolf and the City: Selected Papers from the Nineteenth
> Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, *which I coedited with Sarah Cornish
> (Clemson University Press, 2010).
>
> On Apr 5, 2021, at 2:54 PM, Eleanor McNees via Vwoolf <
> vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Stuart and Jeremy,
>
> I’ll nudge my way into this conversation to say that when I annotated the
> Harcourt edition of *The Years* I spent considerable time both at the
> London Transport Museum archive/library and elsewhere (including a Colorado
> Springs carriage museum that had both landau replicas and hackney cabs)
> researching the history of omnibus and bus transport. I learned at that
> time about the Pirate omnibuses, the shields, the stair guards, etc. as
> well as all of the innovations following the early knifeboard seating on
> the top of the open omnibuses. At one point I gave a Woolf conference paper
> on the history of omnibus travel with specific reference to *Mrs.
> Dalloway *and *The Years* though *Night and Day *should also figure in
> such a discussion. This is all to say that I’m only too aware of how
> recondite many of Woolf’s images are to those of us in the U.S. and perhaps
> elsewhere.
>
> Best,
> Eleanor
> Dr. Eleanor McNees
> Professor & Interim Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of English and Literary Arts
> University of Denver
> Denver, CO 80208
> eleanor.mcnees at du.edu (Eleanor McNees)
>
>
>
> *From: *Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+emcnees=du.edu at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of
> Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
> *Date: *Monday, April 5, 2021 at 10:18 AM
> *To: *Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>, vwoolf <
> vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
> *Subject: *[EXTERNAL] Re: [Vwoolf] Fancy not knowing that!
> [External Email From]: *vwoolf-bounces+emcnees=du.edu at lists.osu.edu
> <vwoolf-bounces+emcnees=du.edu at lists.osu.edu>*
>
>
> I have to admit that I thought the same about pirate buses.  One of our
> VWSGB Members told me.  Now I’ve discovered lots of info.  Below is the
> most famous: the “Chocolate Express”.
>
> Here’s an example of something I didn’t know I didn’t know until I found
> out I didn’t know a few years ago:  what’s a street scavenger?  They pop up
> in T. S. Eliot’s ‘A Cooking Egg’ (1920): ‘The red-eyed scavengers are
> creeping | From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green’.  They are also mentioned
> in “The Years” and “Jacob’s Room”.
>
> Answer: persons ‘whose employment is to clean streets, by scraping or
> sweeping together and removing dirt’ (OED).
>
> Stuart
>
> <image001.jpg>
>
> *From:* Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf
> *Sent:* Monday, April 5, 2021 4:48 PM
> *To:* vwoolf
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Fancy not knowing that!
>
>
> It's a good example of what for many might be an unknown unknown: those
> unfamiliar with cricket might well assume that the nets are for tennis.
> (Another unknown unknown for me was the pirate bus in Mrs Dalloway - which
> before you contextualised it, Stuart, I thought was just a bit of romancing
> on Elizabeth's part. Annotators, I agree, need to be alert to the
> possibility of such ignorance.) The things we know we don't know can always
> be looked up; the things we don't know we don't know remain unresearched.
>
> J
> On 05.04.2021 17:23, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:
>
>
> It was intended as a gentle tease of foreigners outwith the Empire – but
> also an implied criticism of annotated editions that don’t explain what
> readers might need to know.
>
> Stuart
>
>
> *From:* Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf
> *Sent:* Monday, April 5, 2021 4:10 PM
> *To:* vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [Vwoolf] Fancy not knowing that!
>
>
> I suspect you of playing "tease the foreigner" Stuart! I had a memory that
> when in Hollywood, Sir Cedric Hardwicke expected all expatriot Brits to
> turn up for net practice for the local cricket team, but could not find
> this on line. But I did find this, from around the time of *The Waves*:
>
> "The headmaster of High Wycombe Royal Grammar School, Mr. E.R.Tucker, in
> an effort to stimulate the interest of parents in school affairs, has
> arranged cricket practice at the nets for fathers once a week."
>
> Evening Post, Wednesday August 14, 1935
>
>
> On 05.04.2021 16:40, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:
>
> When the boys are at school in “The Waves”, Louis “said”:
>
> “We are parting, some to tea; some to the nets ...”
>
> Alles klar?
>
> Stuart
> (Day 384)
>
>
>
>
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