J. C. Powys' Autobiography: A Reader's Companion - Site POWYS

10 Autobiography
bête noir (16) — Pet aversion (French—the
correct form should be “noire”).
“Beth-Car” (63) — The name of Theodore Powys’s
later house at East Chaldon, meaning “house of
the pasture” (R. P. Graves [70]).
Bewick (97) — Thomas Bewick (1753–1828),
English artist and engraver, best known for his
illustrations of birds and rural life, and for his
extreme realism. The “less cruel effect” obviously
refers to ejaculation. Llewelyn has an essay on
him in Thirteen Worthies.
Big School (69) — Sherborne School, as distinct
from the Preparatory School (q.v.).
Billingsgate (342) — An area of London best
known for its fish-market.
birds’ eggs (2) — Similar references to the ethics
of bird’s-nesting occur elsewhere, including in
Wolf Solent (154).
Birkenhead (363) — In Cheshire, just across the
River Mersey from Liverpool.
Bizet (431) — Georges Bizet (1838–75), French
composer best known for his opera Carmen
(q.v.).
black poodle — See under “Faust.”
Blackmore Vale (89, 152, 643) — A pastoral area in
north Dorset in which Hardy set much of Tess of
the d’Urbervilles.
Blake (45, 72, 312, 347, 369, 377, 378, 393, 423, 451,
453, 457, 513, 521, 577, 641, 651; cf. 409) — William
Blake (1757–1827), English poet and engraver best
known for his Songs of Innocence and
Experience and his prophetic books. The
reference at 369 is presumably to the line “Like a
fiend hid in a cloud” in “Infant Sorrow,” one of
the Songs of Experience. “Damn braces, bless
relaxes” (cf. 45, 521) is one of the proverbs of Hell
in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Plate 9), also
quoted in Obstinate Cymric (40). JCP wrote an
essay on Blake in Suspended Judgments. Cf. also
“Excess ...”
Blake, Mr. [W. H.] (78, 82–3) — William Heitland
Blake (according to Littleton [38]), the headmaster
of Sherborne Preparatory School at the time
when all the male Powyses attended. When he
retired in 1904, Littleton succeeded him. Llewelyn
mentions him briefly in A Baker’s Dozen (48).
Blasco Ibanez (420, 421) — Vicente Blasco Ibanez
(1867–1928), Spanish writer, best known for The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (translated
1918). La catedral (1903) appeared in translation as
The Shadow of the Cathedral (1909).
Blavatsky, Madame (626) — Elena Petrovna
Blavatsky (1831–91), religious leader and
theosophist who became a centre of scandal in
the 1880s. Author of Isis Unveiled (1877), she was
the original founder of the Theosophical Society.
blood-crony (595, 608) — His sister, Marian
Powys, the “kind familiar spirit” and “dark
sorceress” lower on 595.
“blood if you pricked him” (591) — See “If you
prick him ...”
“Bless relaxes ...” (521) — See “Blake.”
blow where I list (529) — Adapted from John 3:8.
Cf. The Inmates (190), Visions and Revisions (221),
The Complex Vision (137), The Religion of a
Sceptic (24), and Rabelais (396).
Blue Coat School (167) — The popular name for
Charterhouse, a well-known English school for
boys in this period.
“bluebells trembling by the forest-ways” (577) —
From Matthew Arnold’s “Thyrsis” (l.75).
Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen (348) — Minor English poet
(1840–1922), known for his opposition to
imperialism.
“blush like any black dog” (153, 447) — From
Rabelais’s Five Books (Book 5, ch.28). The phrase
only appears in Motteux’s translation. The phrase
came to JCP via Bernard O’Neill (q.v.): “blush, as
Bernie would say, like any black dog” (1907 letter
quoted in Wilkinson’s Welsh Ambassadors [144]).
Also quoted in Dostoievsky (169).
“blushed with the blood of kings and queens”
(160) — Somewhat inaccurate quotation from
Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” (l.216), also quoted
in Wolf Solent (49).
Bodleian Library (142) — The famous academic
library at Oxford.
Boers (215), Boer War (301) — The Boers were
South Africans of Dutch descent whose ancestors
were the first white settlers. Their uneasy
relations with British control of the region led to
the Boer War (1899–1902).
“Bog Stream” (89) — Slang term for the River
Lunt, also mentioned in Wolf Solent (307, 420).
Bohemian border (399) — Bohemia was part of
the Hapsburg empire until 1918.
Boileau (231) — Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
(1636–1711), French critic and poet known for his
championing of Classicism in the arts.
Boissevain, Eugene (608) — More correctly, Eugen
Boissevain, husband of Edna St. Vincent Millay
(q.v.).
Bolingbroke, [Lord] (283, 416, 550) — English
politician and writer, mainly on political subjects
(1678–1751). A supporter of the Stuarts against the
Hanoverians and a great friend of Voltaire.
Bolshevik (542), Bolsheviki (525), Bolshevism
(463) — A Bolshevik from “bolche”, meaning
greater, in contrast to “menche”, smaller
(Russian), was a follower of Lenin’s group in the
early days of Russian Communism before the
Revolution, often used more generally to indicate
a communist. “Bolsheviki” is the plural.