Shell shock—devastating cases of what is now called PTSD were endemic to Front-line soldiers—was rarely grounds for discharge, and if so, usually for the officer class.
[88] The college porter was a gatekeeper, resident uncle, police-cum-butler, postmaster, keeper of the keys, enforcer of the curfew, and offerer-of-tea. The porter’s lodge is at the entrance to the college, and he is responsible for the security of all that lies within.
[89] The Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Scene 2. The line means approximately, “Kate, are you feeling blue?”
[90] The “Men of Somerville” included Siegfried Sassoon (in the autumn of 1916), and Robert Graves was posted there in 1917.
[91] Summer or Trinity term in Oxford is from April to June.
[92] An expelled student may be either permanently “sent down” or merely “rusticated”—that is, sent for one or more terms to live among the rustics, contemplating his (or her) sins.
[93] The Proctor is a university officer in charge of discipline. His “bulldogs” are the University police, a private constabulary who hold full powers of arrest in the vicinity of the colleges.
[94] Scouts are college servants or housekeepers.
[95] Gas rings, single burners suitable for boiling water or warming soup, were found in “bedsit” apartments, along with fold-down beds, inadequate lighting, wobbly tables, and gas wall heaters operated by coins.
[96] This reference also appears in “The Greek Interpreter”, although there, too, which “French artist Vernet” is not made clear. Possibly Émile Jean Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a French painter of martial pieces and Arab life, whose defiant truth-telling in battle paintings did not always sit well with his patrons.
[97] Winter or Hilary term, from January to March.
[98] This play is reputedly Holmes’s favorite of Shakespeare’s work, quoted twice by him in Watson’s accounts of their adventures. Many scholars argue that Holmes’s birthday was “twelfth night” (January 6).
[99] The Hameau de la Reine, the “Queen's Hamlet,” is a cluster of farm buildings on the grounds of the palace of Versailles. It was built for Marie Antoinette in 1783 and served as a private meeting place for the Queen and her closest friends, a place where they indulged fantasies of rural life.
[100] Clearly, this took place before baritsu brought Russell’s “various limbs under control.” Cf. footnote 60.
[101] As often, Holmes is ahead of his time scientifically. Although the ABO group was identified in 1901, the next stage of identification, that of the Rhesus group, did not come to light until 1937.
Laurie R. King, The Mary Russell Companion
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