The Time Traveller arrives in 802,701 AD in front of the White Sphinx. Later, the Morlocks try to trap him inside this structure. Any visual adaptation of The Time Machine should prominently feature the White Sphinx. See the attached image which is from Classics Illustrated.
The guards called Immortals take Manse Everard:
"...up a wide avenue lined with sphinxes and the homes of the great."
-"Brave To Be A King," 5, p. 75.
So what is a sphinx?
I must be alone in focusing on the sphinx as common to The Time Machine and Time Patrol.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember those CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED comics, but not sure I ever had one focusing on Wells' THE TIME MACHINE.
I assume those Medo/Persian sphinxes Everard had the bodies of lions and bulls, with male human heads.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I first read THE TIME MACHINE and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS in (accurate) CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED adaptations.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Good! I know I had some CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED as a boy, but I don't recall those titles being among them. One I did have was Wells' IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Verne's. I remember that as well.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Got it. My memory blundered!
Ad astra! Sean
Note that residential segregation of classes (a district of mansions as described in BRAVE TO BE A KING) is actually fairly rare, below the level of kings (and courtiers who wanted to be close to the palace).
In a medieval European city, you might well have a mansion with slum huts built directly against its walls; in a Roman one, with apartment buildings, the ground and first floors (British usage) would be large dwellings for the affluent, with decreasing size and increasing poverty in the ones above, sort of a physical representation of the class system.
A Roman "villa urbana" (rich man's house) would often have little shops built into the street frontage, with the shopkeepers living in a room above it.
And in direct contrast to our recent history, a big house right downtown was a mark of affluence; in Shakespeare's time, the "suburbs" of London were where poor migrants from the countryside lived.
There were a number of reasons for this; perhaps the most basic was the fact that you had to walk or ride to get around. The main benefit of a town dwelling was being within walking distance of everything.
Similar things could happen in the countryside.
One reason that so many villages were "moved" or rebuilt in different locations in the Age of Improvement in England during the 18th/19th centuries was that old manor houses (on estates that didn't have castles), which were often used as the basis for later country houses, had been right in the center of the village, usually next to the church.
The fashion for having the 'country house' isolated in a large area of parkland and gardens required a radical reorganization of rural space.
Either the landowner's mansion had to be rebuilt on a 'greenfield' site, or the village was moved. Often the original manor in the village became a farmhouse, or the priory for the vicar.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember seeing some pictures of Anglican vicarages and wondering why they seemed so large for homes of ordinary clergy. Even allowing for Anglican clergy being usually married and having children, I thought them very large structures. Your comments explains why: they used to be manor houses!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: or were modeled on ones that had originally been manor houses. The English tend to be rather conservative about some types of architecture.
NB: the large vicarages were a post-medieval phenomenon. In medieval times, parish "secular" (non-monastic) clergy were upper-peasants by class, though with extra status because of their ordination. That remained the case in many parts of Europe.
That gradually changed from the 15th century on in England, so that by Victorian times clergy were notionally "gentlemen", though since the stipends varied so wildly (from thousands of pounds to less than a hundred) many of them were very impoverished gentlefolk.(*)
There's a famous mid-Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painting, "the long engagement", which shows a couple in their late 20's or early 30's holding hands and dreaming of when they could get married: he's a curate (sort of an assistant vicar) and they won't be able to support a household until he gets promoted to a better "living".
(*) anything below 150 pounds per annum was the lowest rank of lower-middle-class incomes in Victorian times; there were skilled workmen, upper-working-class, who made that much.
You generally had to make over 200 to be able to marry and remain respectable in middle-class circles. Families at that level or lower would often skimp on food or heating coal to be able to afford a maid-of-all-work as a mark of respectability.
Anything over 350 put you securely into the middle-middle class. Over 750 and you were affluent; over 1000 was securely into the upper-middle-class, and a lot of landed gentry only had in the 750-1000 range when all things like jointures and settlements for widowed mothers were taken into account.
By 5000-10,000 a year you were securely into upper-class or "wealthy".
A rule of thumb before the late-Victorian farming depression was that 1 acre of reasonably good agricultural land commanded rent of about 1 pound a year, or a bit more but 1 when you took things like the landlord's part of maintenance costs into account.
A tenant farmer would make 1-2 pounds an acre profit in a reasonable year after rent and parish charges. Farms in England were, by European standards, very large -- averaging over 100 acres, and with 3/4 of the farmland in farms of over 200 acres.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
So that hapless Anglican curate and his fiancee needed a benefice with a minimum income of 150 pounds before they could marry. I sympathize for them!
One thing I noticed about Eamon Duffy's THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS was how, as Henry VIII and Edward VI were devastating religious life in England/Wales, was of ordinary clergy being addressed as "Sir Christopher," "Sir George," etc. A sign of higher status, despite not being knights.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: one notable thing about Victorian England was how many women never married, and how late the average age of marriage was -- and it got older as you went up the class pyramid, except at the very top.
Rising expectations about what a man should have to support a wife were an element in that; also, England always had heavy emigration and it was male-biased. More single men left England that single women, which meant a heavy surplus of females in the population of marriageable age. Respectable women couldn't travel alone, and there were other barriers too.
From the 1860's on there were special "emigration societies" which helped respectable women emigrate under supervision, and get temporary employment as "household assistants" and so forth.
Unstated (due to Victorian conventions) but very much in mind in all that was the fact that an eligible Englishwoman in a colony with a heavy male surplus would find ample opportunities to hook a husband.
In India, the yearly influx of unmarried female cousins and sisters shepherded by elderly maiden aunts was known as the "Fishing Fleet", for obvious reasons. A member of the Indian Civil Service was a prime catch, because the pay was good and there was a generous pension and fairly early retirement.
(In Ireland, emigration was much closer to 50-50.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the horrendous casualties of WW I must have made the imbalance between the sexes even worse, resulting in even more British women who could not marry.
So things like those emigration societies and the Anglo/Indian "fishing fleet" made sense! I wondered just now if some of Kipling's sardonic "Departmental Ditties" had that desire to snag an eligible Anglo/Indian civil servant in mind?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Oh, most certainly. The "Fishing Fleet" was timed for the cool season, and at social hubs like Calcutta, so that the eager young ladies would meet civil servants in from the "mofsul", the boondocks in Anglo-Indian slang. They hadn't seen a woman who could speak English in six months in many cases, and were rather... vulnerable.
Post a Comment