The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

Hellfi re Club
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Hellfi re Club A group of people who are noted
for their riotous and unfettered debauchery and
other outrageous behavior. <strong>The</strong> original Hellfi re
Club comprised a group of En glish aristocrats led
by Sir Francis Dashwood (1708–81) who held
notorious orgiastic meetings at Medmenham
Abbey in Buckinghamshire. <strong>The</strong> students had their
own Hellfi re Club, at which they drank far too much and
generally made idiots of themselves.
Héloïse See abelard and héloïse.
Hemingway A person (often a writer) or a writing
style of a tough, masculine character. <strong>The</strong> allusion
is to the U.S. novelist and journalist Ernest
Hemingway (1899–1961), whose life and writing
refl ected his own rugged personality. As well as
being a keen big- game hunter and an afi cionado of
bullfi ghting and boxing, he was a heavy drinker
and witnessed fi ghting at close quarters in the
Spanish civil war and World War II. In his writing,
he was characteristically blunt and direct, avoiding
the use of long words and elaborate constructions.
With all those adjectives, and his tendency to use a hundred
words when one would do, he’s certainly no Hemingway.
See also lost generation.
hemlock See drink hemlock.
hem of his garment, touch the To show great
reverence for someone; to demonstrate one’s faith
in another’s abilities or gifts. <strong>The</strong> image of touching
or kissing the hem of a person’s garment is
biblical in origin, alluding to the story related in
Matthew 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34, and Luke
8:43–48 of the sick woman who dared to touch
the hem of Christ’s robe in the belief that he could
perform miraculous cures by mere touch. “Considered
from the point of view of a creator of
character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet.
Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside
him. <strong>The</strong> only man who can touch the hem of his
garment is George Meredith. Meredith is a prose
Browning, and so is Browning” (Oscar Wilde,
Intentions, 1891).
Henry VIII Archetype of a much- married man,
especially one who disposes of his wives in a ruthless
manner. Crowned king of En gland in 1509,
Henry VIII ruled until 1574, during which time he
had a fundamental impact upon En glish history,
not least by breaking away from the Roman Catholic
Church to create the Church of En gland. He
is usually remembered, however, as a larger- thanlife
fi gure verging on a royal monster, who got
through no less than six wives, two of whom
(Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard) he had
beheaded. “He would be surrounded by his family
and court just as Henry VIII might have been”
(Patricia Holton, Mother without a Mask, 1991). See
also bluebeard.
Henry Morton Stanley See darkest africa;
doctor livingstone, i presume?
Hephaestus (hefestbs, hefeestbs) Personifi cation
of skilled craftsmanship. In Greek mythology Hephaestus
was the god of fi re who served as blacksmith
of the gods and made the armor of Achilles.
He was the equivalent of the Roman god Vulcan.
<strong>The</strong> wrought ironwork of the gates marked their maker as
a veritable Hephaestus.
Hera (heerb) Archetype of a quarrelsome, vindictive,
jealous wife. In Greek mythology, Hera
was the wife and sister of Zeus and the equivalent
of the Roman Juno. She was identifi ed as the
daughter of Cronos and Rhea and by Zeus gave