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The Bird of Paradise

Chapter XXI. Valentine Gordon Whitworth. The Election for the State Legislature

Chapter XXI. Valentine Gordon Whitworth. The Election for the State Legislature.

Marmaduke Payne, Bachelor of Laws and Barrister-at-law of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, had laid his lines in unlucky places when he prematurely relinquished his prospects in New Orleans and narrowed down his field of practice to the inferior town of Augusta. Relying when he removed to the smaller field on the oft-repeated promises of support from his wife's father's old friend the coal-miner and suburban retreat proprietor, he had waited nearly three years, to derive not page 138a farthing's worth of benefit from the great man, who, although he commanded a vast interes' in Augusta and district, never put a cent in Marmaduke's way. Of late he had certainly to a very large extent removed his pecuniary interests in Augusta and Maconville to investments in city properties, and for the most of his spare time he lived in the villa which he had built in the suburbs of New Orleans, beguiling himself with the charms of the cuddlesome young housekeeper.

It was, however, an innovation on Marmaduke's part to attempt to establish a practice as a barrister in Augusta. None before him had ever thought of leaving; his chambers in the outer temple of law in the city. A new Act of Congress introduced and enacted since that time, had placed all barristers and solicitors on the same footing, allowing them to engage in the branches which theretofore had been special to each; so that it was quite a common thing to see an ordinary solicitor who had never lived a day of university life in the classical inner temple donning a wig and barrister's gown with far more assurance and asseveration than the élite barristers themselves. The judges of the Supreme Court did not, however, appear to approve of the enactment of Congress, and were frequently suspected of showing unmerited harshness towards the emulous solicitors, and a great amount of favoritism towards the barristers, properly so called. To preserve unspoiled the prestige of the barrister was to succeed; to compromise it by practising both ways was to court failure. This became so well known a fact that it was growing to be a rare thing for an ordinary solicitor to be seen entrusted with any important case before a judge of the Supreme Court; so that the Act of Congress, whose cardinal object was the cheapening of litigation, defeated its own ends, insomuch nearly all the work was performed by a monopoly of barristers in the city, and the average solicitor was relegated to his own particular sphere: where, metaphorically speaking, pulling the strings with the successful barristers against the Act, he raised his fees in all the big causes which the barristers handled.

Two years Marmaduke had been established in Augusta, but he had not saved a dollar, and even if had tried to save money it is questionable if he could have made it to save. The Seven Stars Hotel and the little card-room, quite a miniature Monte Carlo in Augusta, had absorbed nearly all his earnings. Upon the average he found himself very much out, and, indeed, amongst all the players the only one who seemed to derive any profit from the gambling was the publican himself, and outside of the publican the gas company. They slowly but surely fleeced all the others.

"I think I'll give up the notion of staying here another year, Guinevere," he said one morning after a bad night at the hotel, when she called at the office with Cyril, as her husband had not been home all night; "it agrees with you and Cyril I daresay, but it doesn't agree with me."

"Oh! Marmaduke," she replied: "you know you need not let that stand in your way. The main object is your success, and nothing would please me more than to see you get on well; so don't trouble about Cyril and me, for we are ready to go with poor papa,"—kissing the child and in tears— page 139"anywhere in the world; won't we darling? I think it would be much better if you did leave this place, and if I were you, wherever you go, I would keep away from those treacherous hotels. The landlord only wants your money, and when your back is turned, after having seen the worst side of you, he will speak harmfully of you and impair your chances. Where do you think of going, Marmaduke?"

"Back to New Orleans," he answered: "if you don't mind."

"Mind! Marmaduke! why should I mind?" she smiled, and opened her big soft violet eyes: "I shall be happy to go anywhere, and I shall always be happy, no matter what happens, as long as I am with my little pet:" taking Cyril up and kissing him again.

"Very well," he said: "I shall go dawn to the city to-morrow and take an office in the old chambers. I may be a week or so away, as I have another project in view. Here's a letter I got from Whitworth this morning."

"Oh! yes: that is his writing: how is he getting on, I wonder, in Galveston. It is all about Marvel and Moss Rose I suppose," she said.

"Not at all: it's all about me," and he handed her the letter:—

"The Elms, Galveston, 12th Aug., 1848.

My dear Marmaduke,—

All hail! I thought of drawing your attention to a first-class opening for the legislature here, and I wish to urge upon you the great influence you will acquire for increasing your business, if you win the seat. I consider you would stand a first-rate chance. One of the representatives died last week. I attended to him and wrote out his death certificate this morning. The President will declare a vacancy here in due course, and if you have the luck to fill it you would profit largely. If you ever think of re-establishing yourself in New Orleans I need hardly say it would be better for you to make the city your head-quarters and Galveston a branch. You have friends of your own here, and a great many have spoken to me about Mrs. Payne. My father has a good deal of influence in the town among the working classes, and you might count on the support of the Orange lodges. We have such a splendid little baby-girl, so if Mrs. Payne will come with you and bring Cyril we will be glad to see you once again.

Yours faithfully,

With best wishes,

Eugene Whitworth."

"Oh! how good of Eugene," she said, folding the letter; "I always told you he was a good fellow, and you can depend on what he says;" whereupon Marmaduke concluded, rising from the office table over which he had sat waiting for clients so long in vain—"If I see about the chambers in the city first, I could meet you and Cyril at the steamer. Legislature or no legislature, I mean to leave this place as soon as I can."

Next morning he proceeded to the city, and on the following day, meeting them at Mississippi Quay and postponing the engagement of chambers in New Orleans, they all steamed away over the blue waters to Galveston. There they were welcomed by Eugene, and conducted to his home, The page 140Elms. The sight of Guinevere was as gratifying to Eugene as ever, and, although she hesitated about going to the house, as she had not been invited by Marvel, he insisted upon her throwing her ceremonious scruples to one side on the festive and much-honoured occasion. Marvel had given orders to the servant to prepare an elaborate lunch, and had even with her own paradisal hands made what she called "Croutades Marie Louise" for the table, anxious to display the exquisite taste with which the bird of Paradise could prepare a ceremony of the kind. All the wedding presents were very much en evidence. Hors d'œuvre stands and valuable plate, in the shape of silver butter-boats, chased silver cruets, morocco1 cases of fish-knives and forks, dessert knives and forks, were all on view on the chippendale side-board, decorated with mauve orchids and great bunches of deep-crimson roses, while a heavy mahogany case of carving knives and forks (three sizes), dinner knives and forks, breakfast and dessert knives and forks, about a hundred in all, were placed with the lid open to show the blue silk lining of the precious present and the implements, all hall-marked, lying in their little soft blue beds in the case, upon a dinner-waggon near the door, and on a porphyry2 pedestal stood the great emerald bird of Paradise mounted on silver so as to attract the attrition of any one entering. The snow-white cloth on the pompadour table was decorated with double crescents of hibiscus, roses and begonias laid flat, while artistically-arranged sprays of flowers, white predominating, stood upright. Lovely clusters of godetias filled the cut crystal glass flower-containers, supported on a rustic design of fire-gilt brass, and placed punctiliously about the table were most fascinating tiny cruets of reedy glass, with silver mounts and bright cut crystal Venetian tall and slender decanters. After arranging the table, Marvel sat at the window watching the steamer come in and her husband meet his friends.

When the servant had finished the cooking, there being only one in the employ of Marvel at the time (and this one also had given notice of quittal), she was arranged to appear as a housemaid, with a nurse's white cap and a new white lace apron, in order to answer the belt in becoming style.

The repast being quite ready, the visitors arrived in nice time for a gushing reception by Marvel, who appeared to be suffering from the delusion that she was holding a reception in a nutshell of all the visitors who had forgotten to call.

"Let Pearly sit beside me on her high chair," said the doctor, who had already rigged her up aloft and triced her to the stilty-legged baby-chair.

"No I won't: she must go out: ring the bell for the housemaid," snapped the bird of Heaven; but when he again urged his little girl's presence, Marvel snatched her roughly out of the chair, which was capsized by her hurry-skurry. The little child had put her finger on a flower, and was summarily bundled neck and crop out of the door, after the same fashion as Mrs. Gould might have pitched out the swallows from the little nest in the stable.

"Shall I send out Cyril to play with her?" said Guinevere.

page 141

"No," replied Marvel: "he is older, he can stay," with an insinuation that if he were a week younger than he was she would bundle him out too, and that his mother should have left him at home, as the bird of Paradise did not take so much pains with those flowers to please two children. The doctor soon followed Pearly through the door, rescued her crying from the housemaid, and sat her on the chair again beside him, whereupon the bird of Heaven forfeited her sweet angelic temper, and made the guests feel quite uncomfortable.

Little Pearly Imogen enjoyed the entertainment as much as anybody, and sipped the nectar from a red dolly wineglass of raspberry vinegar, while Eugene and Marmaduke quaffed the good old crusty Falernian wine.3

The luncheon being over, the doctor drove his friend around the town, while Guinevere and Marvel stayed at home with the children. Old Christopher infused great hopes into the mind of the aspiring politician, and assured him of the suffrages of the bulk of the working classes, the government departments, the shipping interests, and last, but not least, the Orange Societies. He could fairly well guarantee all that; but beyond that he could not give a conscientious opinion. He had not mixed much with the upper ten thousand, although they knew him well enough; but they were in reality only the coping-stone of the building. The main support consisted almost entirely of the Orange lodges, of which he was right worshipful past grand master and patriarch, together with the government departments and those of the working classes employed, in the building trade. It was his firm belief, as the saying was, that a new candidate would jump the seat.

The doctor's old school-master, a man of great influence with the upper classes, and middle classes too, all the medical gentlemen—including the great gun, Dr. Bruce Ripsom, who had not yet forgiven himself for the blunder on the night when he had roused out the bird from Heaven—and all the legal fraternity promised him their full and unqualified support, so that before he left the town, he had fully made up his mind to offer himself to the electors at the bye-election.

While the peregrinations of the doctor and the lawyer were in vogue about the streets, "How do you get on with him?" said Marvel to Guinevere; "he seems too slow for my fancy."

"Get on with him! how do you think I should get on with him?" said her gentle companion; "I always do all I can to please him, and I think sometimes he is very hard to please when he has been out all night, especially if he has lost any money and doesn't feel fit to go to the office. I never quarrel with my husband, nor anybody if I can avoid doing so. Life is too short for quarreling. I know that he would be better at home than in the Seven Stars Hotel all night; but if he doesn't feel well I make him egg-flips, beef-tea, and chicken broth, and soon get him well again—dear old Marmaduke."

"Egg-flips! beef-tea! chicken broths!!" exclaimed the scared bird of Heaven; "do you make those things for him when he has been out all page 142night drinking? I would see him starve first, and if he got drunk I would give him in charge of the police. My mother advised me, if my husband ever did that, to throw up the windows or run out of the house and scream for the police on the top of the hill, and I intend to do it on the first opportunity I get. "Beef-tea, indeed!" as she swept out of the room: "Beef-fool you, more like!"

Her keen black eyes sparkled with her utterances, but the soft dreamy violet eyes of the dignified and tranquil, the refined and pensive Guinevere, conscious of her superiority, seemed to pity rather than rebuke her.

Coming back in the buggy with Marmaduke and the doctor, old Christopher Whitworth, the right worshipful past grand master of the Orange Societies, stopped at the gate of The Elms, stretching out his arms, yawning with the air of one whose desires were impossible of fulfilment, and saying he would rather walk back straight home to his little cabouche4 than go inside, he left them to re-enter by themselves.

"Well, Guinevere," began Marmaduke, "you haven't seen much of Augusta, but how would you like to live here?"

"Oh! I would like it well enough, but what about the office in the city?" she replied.

"Yes, I must get a house in one of the suburbs—which one would you prefer?" he asked, and she said any one he thought would be most convenient for his practice. He had fully made up his mind, he told her, to contest the election, and suggested that she could come to The Elms occasionally to see Mrs. Whitworth.

"Oh! yes," she thoughtfully replied: "Cyril will come down to play with Nearly whenever he can; but there's only a quarter of an hour to catch the boat, so I'm ready if you are. Kiss me good-bye. Pearly dear, and another kiss for Cyril." Away the visitors went, as the fifteen minutes bell rang on the steamer, and sailed away to New Orleans en route for Augusta, consigning to the doctor the task of engaging accommodation for them on their return to the city in the event of the new candidate being successful.

On the twenty-fifth day in the month of December, 1848, to weld still stronger the chain of Eugene's attachment to his wife, and to reflect the image of Eugene himself in every lineament and expression of his face, with a great flourish of loud timbrels and trumpets heralded into the uncertain world of man, came the first-born son and heir to the new Elysium.

The day after, the alarmed old wifey of the suburban villa proprietor returned from the trail of the old rover's movements in the metropolis of the adjoining State, where she had shadowed him for months. Upon first casting eyes upon the new-born babe, scowling she knitted her nasty old brows, shrivelled her bile-coloured old forehead into goose-skin, and ogling the baby in the cradle she straightway pronounced judgment like a savage Spartan father of old. His chief fault according to the alarmed woman with the goose-skin forehead and the bilious brows was that he looked page 143slightly undeveloped, as if he had come an hour or so too soon and should have waited for the return of the goose-skin forehead and the bilious brows. He had no peacock blue about his skin, there being no abnormal opening in the ventricles of his heart to suffuse his veins with the beloved tints; on the other hand, it was a remarkably delicate integument, almost on his temples and his eyelids, showing, as through a misty veil, the vermilion blood-vessels running riot underneath. "No peacock blue about him," said his father; but the truculent old woman exclaimed that "hit was ower sma' and might as weel be dead." In three months the much-abused baby could pull that vicious old woman's nose, and at three years he could trip her into the gutter, although she was as tough and coarse as an old hippopotamus and had the ways of some old hospital hag.

The old feeding-bottle, that had stood his little sister in such good stead, was ceremoniously taken from its hiding-place, and duly brought to bear upon the little baby boy, with truly marvellous results. In that generation, few American mothers could suckle a child morê materno, as their own mothers did them, and from some obscure cause upon the slightest pretext they reverted to the bottle. The bird of Paradise was a striking example of this defect; she hadn't the pluck or the desire to try—if Pearly Imogen Gould and Valentine Gordon had depended for their sustenance upon their mother, they would never have survived a day. Soon his little muscles swelled out, and his firm sinews delineated their strong bony connections amongst the growing fatness of his legs and arms; his skin took on a healthy action, and the contour of his bright and pleasant face grew more like his father's every day.

"Blue eyes again, Marvel," observed his father: "sure to be something blue about him. I'll warrant he will grow up as hardy and bold as any boy in the dominion."

So like was the baby to his father in facial appearance and form, and even in his little, restless, enterprising ways, that Eugene considered that he should have the proprietary right of naming the baby according to his own fancy, and especially as Pearly Imogen Gould had been the choice of his mother and contained the brand of the great and mighty potentate of coal.

"I'll call him Valentine Gordon. I had an uncle, a master of a whaling ship, called Valentine, who was drowned at sea by being thrown overboard and stunned in the sudden flurry of a death-stricken eighty-barrel right whale off the Kermandec Islands5. It will be an appropriate Latin name, because I know he will grow up firm and strong. There had been one too, an uncle for baby, who, had he lived, would have shed the generous blessing of the milk of his human kindness over his young life: so," said Eugene, "Valentine Gordon shall be his name." Marvel's blood relations were both unsuitable for copying their names, and thinking the proposed name more patrician than the general run of the ones of her other relations, she acquiesced in the right of his father to name him. Thus no other name was put forward, while the nasty bilious-browed old grandmother held page 144aloof from the discussion, and said she didn't care what he was called as he was no good to anybody, and there was nothing to be "fashions" about.

Within a few weeks of the twenty-fifth of December, his more gracious and affectionate grandmother, Miriam, called for him as a matter of course. Amidst the clanking jubilation of the balls of St. John's, she carried him and held him in her arms at the baptismal font long before the pealing bells had ceased their din, where during the christening ordeal the officiating apostle received from the principal performer—Valentine himself—a sudden back-hander for the trouble which he took in making the watery cross upon his filmy forehead, and the new-born little doctor made his exodus from the church homeward-bound. Arriving with his brand-new name, his father stood admiring him, as if threatening—

"To impale, upon his scimitar's sharp point, the knave

That toucheth this, his first-born son and heir."6

The city proper and municipality of Galveston returned three representatives to the State legislature. It was the principal political centre, and for years had been the stronghold of the State-governor himself. The present was a bye-election, necessitated by the death of one of the former representatives.

During the birth and baptismal ceremonies of Valentine Gordon, the work of canvassing and stumping the town was proceeding apace. Three candidates presented themselves. There was a government party and an opposition party; a party of conservatives and free-traders, and party of liberal-radical protectionists. To the former party Marmaduke and an influential brass-founder belonged; to the latter, the proprietor of an extensive fellmongery7. None showed more industry in collecting votes, or in supplying barrels of beer to the stevedores, the government employées, and the drought-stricken navvies of the town than did the great gun, the operating military surgeon, whose wife opened and conducted a dancing saloon. He would clear out the brewery and send its lorries laden with beer to all quarters of the town with his compliments and requests that the thirsty stevedores, railway men, and navvies should do him the honour of swallowing down the health of the irresistible, superlative Marmaduke Payne.

Old Christopher Whitworth mustered the tribes of his doughty Orangemen and all his old colleagues in the Crown lands department, many of whom had left Shrewsbury, in England, and were then residents of Galveston. He left no stone unturned among the main supports of the political edifice, now and then putting in a word with any duke he might meet in his perambulations. In doing so, however, he raised the animus and boiling blood of the Papists, who came out in swarms to frustrate his efforts. The gold harp of Erin, on a large green banner, fluttered on the breeze in the sweet-scented atmosphere of the fellmongery, the proprietor of which was none other than the man of the Sun bone-mill fame, who had sickened of Madame and left her at Augusta two years before—the old Silenus8, page 145Rudolph Hind, the bone - miller. A bitter feeling was engendered among the populace: the principle of men and individuals—not measures—held sway over the parliamentary arena. It quickly became a fight amongst the electors whether they would elect brass whom they knew or hides whom they also knew—a fight between the brassfounder and the tanwasher, between the brassfoundry and the fellmongery—a battle between polish and stench.

A public holiday was proclaimed, and upwards of ten thousand votes recorded. The rancorous feeling between the Orange party and the Roman Catholic party proved to be a great boon to the comparatively unknown Marmaduke. He was a stranger to both parties and stood upon neutral ground aloof from personal animosities. He slipped in thuswise at the head of the poll, and as there was only one seat vacant neither the party of King William nor the adversarial party of Pope Pius IX. could claim a victory over each other. He had been elected—declared the State Governor—by a majority of eight hundred and seventy-six. The light-fingered Gluepot Ike was scrutineer for Marmaduke, in an empty house on the old Kent road. He only got a pen and a bottle of ink; still, as he said, it was something, and he hoped to do better next time.

As the elated Marmaduke stood upon a little wooden frame-work outside the sill of a second storey window of the Village Belle Hotel to return his thanks for the honour of being placed at the head of the poll by such a proud majority, in a long speech his tongue seemed never to know when to stop wagging. Most of the crowd had left before he was half-way through his fawning, flattering, flowery speech, smacking very much of an address to the jury, and an impeachment of his defeated antagonists. The electors had not gone to the spot to hear oratory, but to a presumptive American Donnybrook fair9 in order to ascertain, in the most indelicate manner possible, if they could find anybody to tread on their corns, or even the tails of their coats10. They further anticipated a supply of beer at the ambrosial Bruce's 11expense—but it didn't matter whose—from the brewery. Now that the victory was beyond all question, the generous old doctor abruptly buttoned up his pockets, and Marmaduke had no money to throw away. The landlord of the Seven Stars had all that he ever earned deposited in the Augusta savings' bank.

In consequence of the drought, the crowd dispersed quietly to their homes, and the new member for North Galveston walked away to the steam-boat pier, attended by the two Whitworths, the old but good-customer-for-the-brewery surgeon, and a small sprinkling of the devotées of Freetrade with China. Before leaving, however, he appeared to be slightly overcome by the frequent acknowledgment of the toasts proposed to his health and success, and it occurred to Eugene that the excitement of political life would prove a trifle strong for Marmaduke, and that the free bar at the House of Representatives would find him there oftener than the floor of the legislature. In the art of sing-tai-loo and Yankee-grab he had, during his sojourn at Galveston, received a few valuable wrinkles page 146from the impecunious Brosie, and as to card-playing, the game of forty-fives, which he had thoroughly mastered at the little card-room in the Seven Stars, would find a much broader scope in the new parliamentary club which he expected the new member would be ballotted into on the nomination of one of his colleagues. In the possession of the parliamentary club he had heard that sacred to the members were knottier series of bars and a suite of rooms for gambling purposes, where often in the dawn of the coming day members were regularly seen to stagger into hansom cabs and be driven home to sleep, instead of to their offices on business.

The presentiment proved only too true. Marmaduke fell. The seat in the House of Legislature turned out to be a stepping-stone beyond the card room of the Seven Stars towards the life-long spoliation of his friend; it was a milestone on his road to rack and ruin, body and soul, irretrievable. What Euclid is to the practical utilisation of the science of geometry, such was his short career at legislation to the shame of his blighted after-life. Within six months, as a penniless profligate he was hounded out of circumspect society, to hide his diminished head in the bush. It was the fate of the constant and clinging Guinevere to toil with her needle and thread to keep them from starving and to keep Cyril at school. I.O.U. notes, promissory notes, bills overdue and underdue, kites, writs, summonses, fraud summonses and warrants of distraint poured into the lap of the longsuffering seamstress, whose passionate prayer at the cot of her child, repeated by little Cyril himself, was for the redemption and the rehabilitation of her husband—never to be answered even by an effort on his part to reform—never to be granted by the merciless powers above. In rags and shame he wandered about the bush earning a few shillings killing cotton-blight, and spending them forthwith in the nearest den he could find; while by the side of her fever-stricken Cyril sat the fair statuesque form of his undeserving girl-wife in anguish over his prolonged absence from the little home, which she contrived to keep together, praying fervently for his amelioration and for the salvation of his drifting soul. With mendicancy written on his face, and none so poor as now to do him reverence, he sponged about the country bars, and day after day he lay drunk at their gates while the dogs came and licked his sores. Ichabod, Ichabod,—how soon had his glory departed!

Cyril was always a delicate child. He had been plucked like a brand from the fire by Whitworth before his own unhappy union with Marvel. Again he depended upon Eugene for his life. So much as he could decorously give, helped to keep the little home in North Galveston into which they had removed after his downfall in the city, and much of his money and exertion was spent in the wild-goose chase of reinstating the once honourable Marmaduke Payne. So far on the road to ruin had he travelled, that becoming exhausted by starvation and powerless to turn back, he finally got into the hands of the police. He was arrested as a vagrant. Whitworth was the means of his liberation time after time, and page 147even shepherded him and nursed him as Guinevere did herself, in the endeavour to place him under treatment for the vile malady which had befallen him. To help him out of the slouch of despond was labour in vain; he had not the necessary desire to rise, and he stubbornly baulked all the efforts of his friend and his wife. It were as easy to make the leopard change his spots. The promises which he made to Guinevere were never intended to be kept, and even she was treated, when she humiliated herself bathed in tears before him and implored him to make them, with the utmost callousness and indifference. Toiling and struggling and scheming, her few shillings earned by the making of pinafores and dresses for children in the town he took away from her aching fingers with the true greed of a hopeless drunkard, and left her without a farthing for herself and her child. "With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red," she fretted at the side of the ever-ailing Cyril, making and stitching for any who might patronise her, and mending the clothes for her own little child till all hours of the night—stitching, worrying, stitching, with a gnawing pain at her heart, encouraged only by the pole-star of sorrow—the hope that springs eternal in the human breast.

Cyril after an attack of subacute broncho-pneumonia, again was restored to convalescence, and thankful for one mercy, she resigned herself as one foredoomed in the incomprehensible gloom to toil, destitution and misery. No purer woman ever gave birth to a son; no gentler hands ever slaved to maintain him and advance him in the cold, unkind world. No brave heart ever bore more from a thankless husband, or tried harder to redeem him from evil than did the girl of science from the cloisters of the University—the perfect, the undefiled, the sweet, the calm and the rare Guinevere.

1 Made of or covered with morocco leather.OED Online, sense 2.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

2 A very hard, purplish-red rock quarried in the eastern desert of Egypt for ornamental use; or any attractive red or purple stone taking a high polish. OED Online, sense 2a.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

3 A variety celebrated in the Roman Empire. See for example Catullus 27.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

4 Uncertain.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

5 [sic] The Kermadec Islands.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

6 Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, IV.ii; originally, 'He dies upon my scimitar's sharp point/ That toucheth this...'

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

7 A business concerning the preparation of the skins or hides of animals. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

8 In Greek mythology, the companion of Dionysus, and leader of the Satyrs. Dictionary of Classical Mythology 1995.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

9 A riotous or uproarious meeting. OED Online.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

10 Presumably, seeking out a fight.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]

11 Uncertain; possibly a reference to Robert the Bruce of Scotland.

[Note added by Sara Berger as annotator]