Quicksilver Reading CompanionJack Shaftoe travels from the Dutch Republic toward Paris in 1684, reflecting on his past military service and the shifting political alliances of Europe.
“the French Pox” — A common period term for syphilis, reflecting the tendency of European nations to name the disease after their rivals.
“French Pox had amazed and riddled his memories” — Jack’s “penis incident” and memory issues refer to the physical and neurological effects of syphilis.
“John Churchill fellow, improbably, was married, and had been made a Colonel” — John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough was one of England’s greatest military commanders; at this point, he is a rising officer and a close confidant of the Duke of York.
“these fucking Dutchmen turned Calvinist and revolted” — The Dutch Revolt, or Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), saw the northern provinces of the Netherlands fight for independence from Catholic Spanish rule.
“William of Orange, who was thought to know more’n anyone about staving off the Catholic hordes” — The Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and later King of England, William III of Orange was the primary European antagonist to the ambitions of Louis XIV.
“thanks to the maneuverings of his daddy Winston” — Sir Winston Churchill (1620–1688) was the father of the Duke of Marlborough; his Royalist service helped place his children in the royal household.
“Bob took the King’s shilling” — The King’s Shilling was a slang term for enlisting in the British army, derived from the practice of giving a recruit a shilling as an earnest payment.
“pommel of a Janissary-sword” — Janissaries were the elite infantry units that formed the Ottoman Sultan’s household troops and bodyguards.
“inexpensive cloth coming out of Calicoe in India” — Calico is a plain-woven cotton textile; its popularity led to protectionist bans in England and France to protect domestic wool and silk industries.
“small cargo-vessels called flutes” — A fluyt was a Dutch sailing vessel designed to maximize cargo space and be handled by a small crew, a key factor in Dutch maritime dominance.
“King Looie had bought Dunkirk from King Chuck” — In the sale of Dunkirk in 1662, Charles II sold the strategic port to Louis XIV for five million livres to alleviate his chronic financial problems.
“big warships of that arch-privateer Jean Bart” — Jean Bart was a famous French naval commander and privateer from Dunkirk known for his daring exploits against the Dutch and English.
“prosecute King Looie’s wars there” — Louis XIV of France pursued an expansionist foreign policy that led to near-constant warfare in the late 17th century.
“laying waste to the Spanish Netherlands” — The Spanish Netherlands were a collection of Holy Roman Empire states held by the Spanish Crown; they served as a primary battleground for the Franco-Dutch War.
“one-third of the fields had wheat, one-third oats, and the remaining third were fallow” — The three-field system was a regime of crop rotation used to improve soil fertility and increase agricultural yields.
“But it was quite significant to this Huguenot.” — Huguenots were French Protestants who faced increasing persecution under Louis XIV, leading many to flee France.
“learned some things about phosphorus” — First isolated from human urine in 1669, phosphorus was a major subject of interest for 17th-century natural philosophers due to its bioluminescence.
“and Calicoe-smuggling from Jack” — The Calico Acts were legislation passed to protect domestic wool and silk industries from cheap cotton fabrics imported from India.
“the perpetual pilgrim-camp around St.-Denis” — The Basilica of Saint-Denis was a major monastery and burial site of French kings, serving as a significant destination for pilgrims and the poor.
“The gate of St.-Denis was impossibly congested, so he tried his luck at the gate of St. Martin” — The Porte Saint-Denis and Porte Saint-Martin were monumental triumphal arches built by Louis XIV to replace old medieval city gates.
“the towers and bastions of the Temple, where those Knights of Malta had their own city” — The Temple (Paris) was a semi-autonomous precinct held by the Knights Hospitaller (Knights of Malta).
“the great market-place of Les Halles” — Les Halles was the traditional central market of Paris, known for its immense scale and the distinct social class of its vendors.
“an agent of King Looie’s Lieutenant of Police” — The Lieutenant General of Police was an office created by Louis XIV to modernize urban order, lighting, and surveillance in Paris.
“end with Jack chained to an oar in Marseille” — Galley slavery was a common punishment in Bourbon France where convicts were sentenced to row in the Mediterranean fleet.
“statue of King Looie’s dear old pop, Looie the Thirteenth—on horseback” — An equestrian statue of Louis XIII stood in the center of the Place Royale until it was destroyed during the French Revolution.
“the King’s Library” — The Bibliothèque du Roi was the royal library of France, which became a center of European scholarship under Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
“louis d’or” — The louis d’or was the standard French gold coin introduced by Louis XIII in 1640, used as a high-value international currency.
“the district called the Marais” — The Marais was an aristocratic district of Paris that also served as a bustling center for artisans and trade.
“musicians with bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies” — A hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that produces sound by a hand-cranked wheel rubbing against the strings.
“All of the Turks who sell coffee in the streets are actually Armenians” — Armenian coffee merchants were the primary vendors of coffee in 1670s Paris, often dressing in “Oriental” fashion to market the exotic beverage.
“not until the Turks fled from Vienna, and left mountains of it behind” — The Battle of Vienna (1683) is traditionally credited with introducing coffee culture to Central Europe via captured Ottoman supplies.
“The only people who could afford to keep fixed shops were members of a few princely trades” — Retail in 17th Century Paris was dominated by street hawkers; fixed shops were a luxury for high-end guilds like wig-makers.
“The heads on the spikes before the city-gates.” — Exemplary punishment, such as displaying the heads of executed criminals on pikes, served as a public deterrent.
“These were the savants, the Magellans” — Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe; he is used here as a metaphor for pioneering rats.
“unbeknownst to the apothecaries and par-fumiers” — Apothecaries formulated remedies and were often located near perfumers due to their shared use of herbs and chemicals.
“a smoking and steaming apparatus of hammered copper that was strapped to his body.” — Early coffeehouses were preceded by “coffee-men” who walked the streets with portable copper boilers.
“Emmerdeur” — An emmerdeur is a French vulgarity for a troublemaker, but here refers to Jack’s disguise as a “shitter” covered in filth.
“a sort of lean-to shack, called by the grand name of entresol” — An entresol is a mezzanine floor, though Jack uses the term ironically for his rooftop shack.
“toward his old playground, the Pont-Neuf” — The Pont-Neuf was the first Paris bridge built without houses, becoming the city’s primary social hub.
“shield decorated with a trinity of fleur-de-lis” — The fleur-de-lis was the primary symbol of the French monarchy and the Catholic Church in France.
“demons who were toppling backwards onto a mess of books labelled… M. Luther, J. Wycliffe, John Hus, John Calvin” — These leaders of the Protestant Reformation were depicted as demons in Counter-Reformation Catholic art.
“cranes powered by pairs of large stepped wheels” — A treadwheel crane was a wooden lifting device powered by humans walking inside a large drum.
“twin, round towers of the Conciergerie” — The Conciergerie was a former royal palace that became a notorious prison and seat of the French judicial system.
“The Palais de Justice was there, too” — The Palais de Justice housed the Parlement of Paris, which acted as a high court.
“In the garden of Tuileries… trees… being tortured and racked by the King’s gardeners” — The Tuileries Garden featured topiary and strict geometric landscaping popular in the French formal style.
“impression of a small creature, crushed flat, and suspended in the rock… known to be a trick of Nature” — In early paleontology, fossils were often debated as “jokes of nature” rather than biological remains.
“see an angel with a flaming sword, like a kienspan” — A kienspan was a traditional lighting device consisting of a thin, resinous splinter of pine wood.
Original annotations by: quillman