“Germs.”
GANGNES: The Germ Theory of Disease ("Germ Theory")--the understanding that diseases are caused by microorganisms (bacteria and viruses)--only came into British public consciousness toward the end of the nineteenth century. Prior to the rise of Germ Theory, "Miasma Theory" dominated scientific conceptions of the nature of disease. Gaining a better understanding of how diseases were caused and spread led to reforms in public health and sanitation.
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would fight no more for ever
GANGNES: Note here that HUGHES AND GEDULD disagree with MCCONNELL's identification of the reference.
From MCCONNELL 289-90: "A last, and very curious, invocation of the sub-theme of colonial warfare and exploitation. In 1877 Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians had surrendered to the United States Army in a noble and widely-reported speech: 'I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. . . . Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more for ever.' Wells, by associating the tragic dignity of Chief Joseph's language with the now-defeated Martian invader, achieves a striking reversal of emotion. For we now understand that it is the Martians, pathetically overspecialized prisoners of their own technology, who are the truly pitiable, foredoomed losers of this war of the worlds, of ecologies, of relationships to Nature."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 224: MCCONNELL's comment is "farfetched. ... [T]he Nez Perce in Wells's day were unsung, and he would not deal in such an obscure allusion."
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Briareus
From MCCONNELL 259: "in Greek myth, a pre-Olympian giant with fifty heads and a hundred hands."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 220: "In Greek mythology Briareus was a giant with fifty heads and a hundred hands."
From STOVER 210: "Briareus, in Greek mythology, is a giant with fifty heads and a hundred hands. The Martians' robotic Handling Machines are the multiplex hands of their guiding heads--one giant in their common purpose."
From DANAHAY 156: "in mythology, a monster with a hundred hands"
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The brotherhood of man! To make the best of every child that comes into the world! . . How we have wasted our brothers! . . . . . Oppressors of the poor and needy. . . . The Wine Press of God!
From MCCONNELL 257: "A jumble of Biblical allusions, probably the most important of which is to Isaiah 63:3, an image of apocalypse or the vengeance of God."
From DANAHAY 155: (re just "The Wine Press of God") See Isaiah 63:3.
tear out the hair of the living women they captured, in order to deck themselves with the spoils; nor did they, in my judgment, carry the sporting instinct quite so far as men
GANGNES: These are references to how human beings treat "lower animals"; for example, hunting them for fun, skinning them or cutting off their horns for clothing and jewelry, and so forth. The comparison would be especially appropriate during a time when "big game"/trophy/sport hunting in colonial locales (especially Africa) was popular among British men. A particularly tragic example is the ivory trade, which forms the backdrop of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899).
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vivisects
GANGNES: Vivisection is "the action of cutting or dissecting some part of a living organism; spec. the action or practice of performing dissection, or other painful experiment, upon living animals as a method of physiological or pathological study" (Oxford English Dictionary).
Since Wells cut this section from the volume, no explicit reference to vivisection remains in a collected edition of the novel. However, the practice is central to Wells's 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.
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Pompeii
From MCCONNELL 236: "the Roman city on the Bay of Naples, completely buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 216: "The eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples on August 24, A.D. 79 buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum under thousands of tons of volcanic ash and lava, killing some 20,000 inhabitants."
From DANAHAY 136: "The Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. Archaeologists found citizens of Pompeii who had been overcome by the ash from the eruption preserved where they had fallen."
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Channel Fleet
GANGNES: "a fleet of the Royal Navy detailed for service in the English Channel. ... In 1909 the Channel Fleet became the 2nd Division of the Home Fleet." (Oxford English Dictionary).
Blackfriars Bridge. At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge
GANGNES: Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge are two large bridges spanning the Thames from north to south in the eastern part of London. Today, the Millennium Bridge (a pedestrian bridge) and Southwark Bridge lie between them, but Southwark Bridge was not opened until 1921, and the Millennium Bridge 2000 (hence the name). These are four of the five Thames bridges overseen today by the London City Corporation. See the City of London site's page on bridges.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 227: Blackfriars Bridge is "a bridge in central London between Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge. It spans the Thames from Queen Victoria Street (on the north) to Southwark Street (on the south).
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 234: Tower Bridge is "London's most famous bridge. It opens periodically to admit the passage of shipping. It spans the Thames between the Tower of London (on the north) and the district of Bermondsey (on the south)."
The Jew
GANGNES: The anti-Semitism embodied in this figure is clear even when "Jew" is changed to "man" in the 1898 volume and subsequent editions (see the text comparison page). As STOVER (111) observes, the caricature of a greedy "eagle-faced man" would have been recognizable to Victorian readers even with the explicit word "Jew" removed.
Vestry
GANGNES: Note that MCCONNELL, HUGHES AND GEDULD, and STOVER do not completely agree on their explanations of this reference.
From MCCONNELL 218: In the Church of England, the Vestry is not just the room in a church where vestments are stored; it is also a committee of parishioners who arrange local matters like street cleaning.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 214: "Vestry here is not used in its usual ecclesiastical sense but refers to a committee of citizens 'vested' with the task of arranging for such basic local services as health and food inspection and garbage disposal. St. Pancras (then a London borough) is located northwest of the City of London."
From STOVER 161: "A public-health committee of that city district responsible for its garbage removal--a task now beyond its capacity as all public services are overwhelmed."
St. James’ Gazette
From MCCONNELL: evening paper published 1880-1905
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 212: "Established in 1880, St. James's Gazette was a pro-Tory paper with features that also appealed to readers with intellectual literary interests."
GANGNES: St. James's Gazette (Pearson's mistakenly leaves off the second "S") was a conservative daily broadsheet. It included social, political, and literary commentary, news, marriage announcements, stock market prices, and advertisements.
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pillars of fire
GANGNES: MCCONNELL is partially incorrect here; his citation is more thorough in that it addresses both the pillar of fire and pillar of smoke, but the appropriate chapter is Exodus 13, not Exodus 15. The most thorough and correct citation here would be a combination of the two--Exodus 13:21-22--which STOVER cites, though inexplicably as a note at the beginning of Chapter XII rather than at the textual reference.
From MCCONNELL 173: "In Exodus 15:21-22, God sends a pillar of fire to guide the Israelites through the Sinai Desert by night, and a pillar of cloud to guide them by day."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 209: "See Exodus 13:21: 'And the Lord went before them [to guide the Israelites through the Sinai] ... by night in a pillar of fire.'"
From STOVER 114: quotes Exodus 13:21-22, then: "As the Lord guided the Israelites through the Sinai desert, so the Martians lead humanity through a wasteland of suffering. Ahead, leaving the old order behind, is the promise of world unity."
the potteries
From MCCONNELL 168: "A district in central England, also called the 'Five Towns,' famous for its pottery and china factories. The area was a favorite subject of Wells's friend, the novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 208: The "five towns" MCCONNELL refers to are Stoke-on-Trent, Hanley, Burslem, Tunstall, and Longton. In 1888 Wells spent three months in the Potteries region.
From DANAHAY 80: "an area of central England with a large number of china factories and their furnaces"
a rapidly fluctuating barometer
GANGNES: This indicates that the weather is volatile and likely heralds an imminent storm. See Oxford English Dictionary on "barometer": "an instrument for determining the weight or pressure of the atmosphere, and hence for judging of probable changes in the weather, ascertaining the height of an ascent, etc" and Encyclopædia Britannica entry.
these is vallyble
GANGNES: A large collection of orchids would, indeed, have been quite valuable. The craze surrounding "orchid hunting"--the search for rare and beautiful orchids to collect (and/or sell to collectors)--was at its height during the late nineteenth century, to the point where the fad had a name: "orchidelirium." Some varieties would fetch extremely high prices, and wealthy Victorians sank excessive amounts of money into their collections.
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photographically distinct
GANGNES: See earlier note in this installment from STOVER on "much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light." As MCCONNELL (182) notes in Installment 4: "The first portable camera, the Kodak, had been patented by George Eastman in 1888. Wells himself was an ardent amateur photographer."
Even before the portable camera and the beginnings of amateur photography, the prevalence of photojournalism would have made most readers familiar with, and likely interested in, photography. References to cameras and photography, especially in relation to the heat ray, are prevalent throughout the novel.
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much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light
From STOVER 81: "The Heat-Ray is often taken as a prophecy of beam-focused lasers, but this is to miss the photographic metaphor Wells uses: 'the camera that fired the Heat-Ray,' 'the camera-like generator of the Heat-Ray.' The Martians' rayguns are in fact cameras in reverse, emitting light not receiving it, and they are in fact mounted on tripods as were the heavy old cameras of the day. What they see they zap. More, the photo-journalistic realism of the invasion recounted by the narrator recalls that of Roger Fenton, whose coverage of the Crimean War in 1855 is the first instance of a war photographer on the scene of action. His pictures were accompanied by sensational stories done by the famed William Howard Russell of the London Times, the first war correspondent in the modern sense. The narrator's account is modeled after both precedents, visually and journalistically."
GANGNES: Stover here gestures (though not by name) to MCCONNELL (145), whose note is quoted by HUGHES AND GEDULD in their edition. MCCONNELL'S note reads: "Though the details of the heat-ray are vague, they do anticipate in some remarkable ways the development of the laser beam in the 1950s."
That said, MCCONNELL and others rightly point to one of the numerous instances in which Wells's descriptions of technologies and events appear prescient. Indeed, many of the Martian technologies seem to anticipate military tech developed for use in the First and Second World Wars. For an analysis of The War of the Worlds and its early illustrations as they relate to early twentieth-century warfare, see Gangnes, "Wars of the Worlds: H.G. Wells’s Ekphrastic Style in Word and Image" in Art and Science in Word and Image: Exploration and Discovery (Brill, 2019), pp. 100-114.
Gorgon circlet of tentacles
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 203: "Gorgon" is an allusion to monsters from Greek myths "whose hair was a tangle of writing snakes." Humans were irresistibly tempted to look at them, but doing so would turn the viewer to stone.
GANGNES: See Medusa as an example.
“Extra-terrestrial”
GANGNES: This term was relatively new when Wells wrote the novel; it first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and was generally used in scientific journals.
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telegraph the news
GANGNES: The kind of electrical telegraphy with which Wells's readers would have been familiar began development in the early-to-mid nineteenth century and was commonly used by the end of the Victorian period.
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I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days.
GANGNES: It is not clear whether "Markham" is supposed to refer to a real editor of a specific newspaper. W. O. Markham edited the British Medical Journal, but that publication was not an illustrated paper. It is highly likely that "Markham" is a fictional character who is an acquaintance of the narrator.
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Punch
GANGNES: Punch (1841-2002) was a weekly satirical magazine that was first marketed toward the Victorian middle class. It included text, cartoons and illustrations, and other visual features. It was characterized by a "whimsical mode of comedy that focused on the trials and aspirations of the still emergent middle classes."
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Nature
From MCCONNELL 126: Nature is a scientific journal first edited by Sir Norman Lockyer, who was one of Wells's teachers at the Normal School of Science.
From STOVER 57: This is a reference to the article "A strange Light on Mars," which was published in Nature in 1894.
GANGNES: This is one of the many instances where Wells establishes the novel within a framework of real scientific discoveries and historical events. These connections enhance the realism and journalistic quality of the narrative.
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Perrotin, of the Nice Observatory
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 199: Nice Observatory was "France's most important nineteenth-century observatory." It was constructed in 1880 on Mt. Gros, northeast of Nice. It used a 30" refracting telescope.
From MCCONNELL 126: Henri Joseph Anastase Perrotin (1845-1904) was a French astronomer who worked at the Nice Observatory 1880-1904.
GANGNES: The 1898 edition adds a reference to Lick Observatory (in California), which the narrator says noticed the light before Perrotin did.
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Schiaparelli
From MCCONNELL 126: Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910) was an Italian astronomer who claimed to have discovered "canals" on Mars. Schiaparelli called them canali ("channels" in Italian) but the (mis)translation of the word in to English caused speculation that the canali might have been made by intelligent life.
From STOVER 57: Schiaparelli mapped Mars during the opposition of 1877 and provided names for some surface features still used today.
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Tasmanians
From MCCONNELL 125: In the eighteenth century, England drove native Tasmanians from their land in order to turn Tasmania into a prison colony.
From STOVER 55-6: "The racially Australoid natives of Tasmania survived until 1876 in a state of upper paleolithic culture. To the island's Dutch and later British colonists, they were so many subhumans hunted down for dog meat."
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inferior races
GANGNES: "Inferior" as it is used here reflects Victorian conceptions of racial hierarchies. There are, of course, many, many scholarly works on this subject, but here are a few good places to start:
vanished bison and the dodo
From MCCONNELL 125 and 151: The dodo was a large, flightless bird from Mauritius that was hunted into extinction by the seventeenth century. North American bison were also thought to be on the verge of extinction during this time. This is the first of two comparisons between the extinction of the dodo and the potential extinction of humans by the Martians; the second is in Chapter VII.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 205: "Later, the very idea of such a bird [as the dodo] was ridiculed ... until skeletal remains came to light in 1863 and 1889."
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idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable
From DANAHAY 41: Reference to a Victorian debate regarding the existence of intelligent life on Mars. See Wells's article "Intelligence on Mars" in the Saturday Review 8 (April 4, 1896), p. 345-46.
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London veiled in her robes of smoke
GANGNES: The "robes of smoke" here refers to the "London fog" (also known as "pea soup fog," "black fog," and "killer fog"). This greasy, yellowish fog that hung around London in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was a byproduct of coal burning. It caused respiratory problems and other illnesses for London residents, especially factory workers. Here, then, Wells offers a vision of a London whose pollution has, perhaps paradoxically, been temporarily swept away by the Martians' own Black Smoke, which has brought London's industry to a standstill.
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Samson
From MCCONNELL 286: "The incredibly strong, unruly hero of Jewish folklore whose exploits are celebrated in Judges 13:1-16:31. Taken prisoner by the Philistines, he destroyed himself and them by pulling down the walls of their palace."
destruction of Sennacherib
From MCCONNELL 289: "'The Destruction of Sennacherib' is the title of one of the most famous poems of Lord Byron (1788-1824). In II Kings: 19 it is related how the Assyrian King Sennacherib brought a great army to war against the Israelites; but, thanks to the prayers of the Israelites, the Lord killed Sennacherib's whole army in a single night. The legend has an obvious relevance to the sudden, total, and unhoped-for obliteration of the Martian invaders."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 224: "In a single night, in answer to the prayers of the Israelites, God destroyed the Assyrian army led by King Sennacherib (II Kings 19:35-37). This is the subject of Byron's celebrated poem 'the Destruction of Sennacherib'."
From DANAHAY 182: "reference to II Kings: 19 in which an entire army is wiped out by God in one night"
special constable
GANGNES: "Special constables" in the Victorian period were private citizens who were appointed or volunteered to help the official police keep the peace in times of crisis. The "white badge" (below) likely refers to the white armbands issued to special constables in the nineteenth century. "Staff" may indicate their truncheons, or the narrator was given another kind of wooden weapon.
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Carver
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 225: This name has not been traced to any "real" person.
possible that it combines with argon
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 225: "This contradicts the earlier statement that the Black Smoke contained 'an unknown element giving a group of four lines in the blue spectrum'. ... Actually, argon, as an inert gas, cannot combine with another element to form a compound."
GANGNES: The "blue spectrum" line is not in the serial. See Installment 6 note. HUGHES AND GEDULD (225) speculate that this kind of "carelessness in this final chapter probably reflects Wells's changing intentions regarding its publication." These "changing intentions" had much to do with Heinemann's insistence on the book being longer (HUGHES AND GEDULD 5-6).
Lessing
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 225: This name has not been traced to any "real" person.
Knowledge
GANGNES: Knowledge: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, Plainly Worded -- Exactly Described (1881-1918) was founded as a weekly periodical with three-column pages by astronomer Richard Anthony Proctor in an effort to make scientific research more accessible. Advertisements allowed Knowledge to undercut the sales of Nature (see next note and Installment 1). It became a monthly periodical in 1885 and, under the editorship of Arthur Cowper, began to introduce reproductions of astronomical photographs, which allowed for the popular distribution of pictures of the stars. This structure of Knowledge at the time when Wells was writing The War of the Worlds is consistent with the idea that the journal might have published photographs of Mars and Venus.
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corresponding column of Nature
GANGNES: This is a reference to the real article in Nature that was mentioned in Installment 1 ("A Strange Light on Mars").
the mockery of life in a galvanised body
GANGNES: Possibly a reference to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818), or at least to the theories about using electricity to reanimate dead flesh that inspired her story. See Sharon Ruston, "The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein" on the British Library's website.
The greater part of the structure is the brain, sending enormous nerves to the eyes, ear and tentacles.
From DANAHAY 144: "The Martians are all brain, in keeping with Wells's theory that the bodies of 'advanced' creatures would atrophy through disuse."
birds used in pigeon shooting, theirs was indisputably a fortunate one. And the aimless collecting spirit which encourages the systematic impalement of insects by children
GANGNES: Live pigeon shooting was at peak popularity in late-1800s Britain. It involved rounding up live pigeons and releasing them in such a way that participants could shoot them with rifles mid-flight. Clay pigeon shooting was introduced in 1880 as a more controlled, convenient, and humane sport.
The "systematic impalement of insects" refers to butterfly collecting and other sorts of insect collecting--a fad that was extremely popular during the Victorian period (it features in George Eliot's novel Middlemarch (1871-2)). Insects were displayed to their best advantage by driving a pin through their bodies to stick them into display boxes.
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the case with the ants
GANGNES: Ants do sleep, though not in the same way humans or many other animals do.
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the case.
GANGNES: The 1898 version of the novel adds two paragraphs here about the thoughts of "a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute" on Martian technology and anatomy. This is commonly thought to be a cheeky reference to Wells himself. See text comparison page.
Lilienthal soaring machines
From MCCONNELL 249: "Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), German engineer, was the chief developer of glider flight."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 219: "German engineer Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was one of the pioneers of man-bearing gliders."
From DANAHAY 148: "gliders invented by Otto Lilienthal (1849-1896), a German engineer"
sticks
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 219: "'Sticks' was a common abbreviation for 'shooting-sticks'; pistols."
evolution
GANGNES: In this case, not just the "natural" process that we commonly associate with Charles Darwin's capital-E Evolution, but rather, a biological evolution progressing alongside technological innovation. Martians' technologies are far more evolved than humans', but their tools and technologies are as well.
I have been still too long
From STOVER 209: "A dim echo of Isaiah 42:14, 'I have been still, and refrained myself.' The rest of the curate's rantings descend into more biblical-sounding rhetoric. He is now so self-indulgent in his righteousness that he loses control of scripture, once the very basis of his sense of failing. It is a nice comment on the weakness of theological doctrine to cope with truly catastrophic, even apocalyptic events like the Lisbon earthquake."
Woe unto this unfaithful city. Woe, woe! Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet
From MCCONNELL 258: "another jumble of Biblical allusions, mainly to the Book of Amos in the Old Testament and to Revelation in the New."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 219: "Most of the passage is merely biblical-sounding rhetoric. 'I have been still too long' apparently echoes [Isaiah] 42:14: 'I have been still, and refrained myself.'"
Waltham Abbey Powder Mills
GANGNES: Waltham Abbey is ~15 miles north of the London city center. This is where the Royal Gunpowder Mills are located. Gunpowder production began there in the 1660s, and by the nineteenth century the mill was taking advantage of steam power to supply explosives to the British Navy and Army. The destruction of this site, then, is a huge blow to the British defense against the Martians; in trying to destroy one of the fighting machines, the British destroy a valuable supply of explosives for their military.
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used in automatic mines across the Midland counties
From MCCONNELL 226: "'Automatic mines' are mines set to detonate on contact with any moving object; they are so called to distinguish them from mines exploded by electric current from shore. ... The mines are set to block the expected advance of the Martians into the counties (Leicester, Warwick, Nottinghamshire, etc.) in the middle of England."
Midland Railway Company
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 215: "The Midland Railway Company provided public transportation to such Midlands cities as Nottingham, Leicester, Manchester, and Leeds. Its London terminus was St. Pancras Station."
Committee of Public Supply
From STOVER 169: "A vigilante group whose name echoes that of the Committee of Public Safety formed under Robespierre during the French Revolution."
leviathan
From MCCONNELL 230: "gigantic sea beast of Biblical legend"
GANGNES: See various Biblical references and Wikipedia article on the Leviathan.
rained down darkness upon the land
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 216: echoes several biblical passages: 1) Genesis 19:24 ("Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven"); 2) Exodus 10:22 ("And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt."); 3) Matthew 27:45 ("Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.").
coloured supplements
From MCCONNELL 240: "Popular newspapers frequently issued these supplements, cheap and crude reproductions, 'suitable for framing,' of famous works of art or stirring historical scenes; they decorated the homes of many lower middle class families."
torpedo boats and destroyers
From MCCONNELL 210: "The first British destroyer, the Havoc, was commissioned in 1893. The development of steam power in the second half of the century had revolutionized the concept of naval warfare, and put in jeopardy Britain's traditional bulwark of defense, the Royal Navy. In the growing war-fever at the end of the century, much concern was generated around what seemed to be the increased power of European navies, especially the French, and the Naval Defense Act of 1889 laid down rules for the refurbishing of the Navy similar to those which had earlier attempted to reinvigorate the Army."
Miss Elphinstone
From STOVER 158: This heroic character is likely named after Montstuart Elphinstone (died 1859), who explored the dangerous wilds of Afghanistan on behalf of the British Raj. Wells's readers would have been familiar with his feats.
East End factory girls
From MCCONNELL 216: "The East End of London, until well into the 1930s, was a notorious working-class slum."
galvanised
From DANAHAY 122: "The Italian scientist Luigi Galvani (1737-98) passed electricity through dead animal tissue to make it move; this kind of involuntary movement became known as galvanism."
Lord Garrick
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 215: "Garrick" has not been traced to a real person.
Chief Justice
GANGNES: Note that MCCONNELL disagrees with HUGHES AND GEDULD and STOVER here about the importance of this title.
From MCCONNELL 220: "In England, the presiding judge of any court with several members."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 215: "The nearest American equivalent [of "Chief Justice" here] (although there are many differences in the two offices) would be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."
From STOVER: "The Lord Chief Justice of England is equivalent to the Chief Justice of the United States."
Goths and Huns
From MCCONNELL 224: "The Goths were a Teutonic people who invaded and settled in the Roman Empire between the third and fifth centuries A.D. The Huns, an Asiatic people, invaded and pillaged the Empire during the fifth century A.D."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 215: "The Goths, a Germanic tribe, invaded Rome's Eastern and Western Empires during the third through the fifth century. The Huns, a nomadic Asian people, under their leader Atilla, invaded and ravaged much of Europe during the fifth century."
Sunday League
From MCCONNELL 192: Sunday Leagues were "religious groups which gathered to protest the opening of pubs on the Sabbath"
From DANAHAY 99: a Sunday League was a group "opposed to opening the pubs on Sundays [who] organized wholesome alternatives such as excursions"
The majority of people in London do not read Sunday papers.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 212: "In the 1890s, Sunday papers far outsold dailies.... Wells did not foresee the change and unwittingly 'dated' his narrative for future readers" when newspaper reading habits changed.
That was how the Sunday Sun put it, and a clever, and remarkably prompt “hand-book” article in the Referee
From MCCONNELL 193: "Two evening papers. The Sun was published 1893-1906, the Referee 1877-1928.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 212: "The Sun, London's first popular halfpenny evening newspaper, was established in 1893 by T. P. O'Connor. A former London weekly, the Referee (founded 1877), was popular for its focus on humor, satire, sports, and theater."
GANGNES: The Referee was a "Sunday sporting newspaper"; the Sun was a Tory newspaper.
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Foundling Hospital
From MCCONNELL 193: "One of the first hospitals and nurseries for abandoned or illegitimate children, the Foundling Hospital was founded in 1739 in the London district of Bloomsbury."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 212: "The Founding Hospital, in Bloomsbury, London, near the British Museum, was established in 1739 by Thomas Coram. Despite its name, it was not a home for foundlings but a shelter for illegitimate children whose mothers were known."
places on the South-Western network
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 212: "The various routes and stations of the (now defunct) South-Western Railway Company. Its terminus is Waterloo Station, London. The network had three main branches: the Northern, serving locations in the direction of Staines and Reading; the Central, serving locations in the direction of Bournemouth and Southampton; and the Southern, serving locations in the direction of Guildford, Epsom, and Leatherhead."
lungs
From DANAHAY 101: "green spaces supposed to act like 'lungs' providing clean air for the rest of London"
Albany Street barracks
From STOVER 141: "Army barracks in central London. In the event, soldiers quartered there are useless in facing unconventional Martian forces."
They communicated with each other by means of siren-like howls, running up and down the scale from one note to another.
From STOVER 145: Another evocation of the Prussian military model; their communications were superior to those of the French in the Franco-Prussian War.
make a greater Moscow
GANGNES: MCCONNELL and HUGHES AND GEDULD seem to be at odds here about the historical significance of this reference. STOVER (147) agrees with HUGHES AND GEDULD.
From MCCONNELL 206: "From September 2 to October 7, 1812, the French Army of Napoleon occupied Moscow, burning and destroying more than three-fourths of the city. They were finally compelled to retreat, however, due to Russian guerrilla resistance and the impossibility of acquiring adequate provisions."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 213: "To frustrate the Martians by destroying their major objective, London, as the Russians did to Napoleon in 1812 by setting fire to Moscow."
kopjes
From STOVER 148: "Small hills of South African locution made familiar to English readers in accounts of the Boer War, from behind which Boer guerrillas sniped on English troops. Although the war did not officially break out until 1899, the landscape of the coming conflict was reported by [Rudyard] Kipling."
earthly artillery
GANGNES: HUGHES AND GEDULD (213) observe that this is likely a reference to Satan's "infernal artillery" in Milton's Paradise Lost, rather than a "celestial artillery" (STOVER 148 uses this term as well) as an inverse of "earthly artillery." In the context of a Martian invasion, however, "celestial" in opposition to "infernal" becomes complicated; in a narrative like Milton's, it would refer to Heaven, whereas in the context of Wells, it would be "the heavens," i.e., space. The Martians are far from benevolent angels; they are, perhaps, "avenging angels," or akin to infernal beings, despite being from a neighboring planet. In the context of this novel, might we imagine a new kind of artillery: an "alien artillery"?
crammer’s biology class
From MCCONNELL 191: "an advanced student or younger teacher who, for a fee, tutors other students in preparation for their examinations"
From DANAHAY 98: a crammer was/is "somebody who helps students 'cram' for their exams. This was usually a graduate student or somebody with an advanced degree; Wells himself worked as a 'crammer' preparing students for science exams."
“It’s bows and arrows against the lightning, anyhow,”
STOVER: "It is the inequality of combat, magnified, between French and German forces in the Franco-Prussian War."
GANGNES: In addition to STOVER's note, consider the larger scope of nineteenth-century European imperialism; the 1890s were a time when the British empire was nearing its decline, and The War of the Worlds was one of many well-known novels written at the end of the century that addressed imperialism. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (serialized in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1899 before being collected) tells of a real-life imperial experience, but Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was, like The War of the Worlds, published in 1897, is a very different kind of novel that nonetheless explores the idea of Britain being invaded by a superior entity in the way the British invaded colonial lands.
Numerous Wells scholars have written on the "reverse colonization" and "Empire comes home" nature of The War of the Worlds. As Robert Silverberg writes, "[Humans] simply don’t matter at all [to the Martians], any more than the natives of the Congo or Mexico or the Spice Islands mattered to the European invaders who descended upon them to take their lands and their treasures from them during the great age of colonialism.” Likewise, Robert Crossley observes, "The Martians do to England what the Victorians had done to Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific--and Wells intended that his fellow English imperialists taste a dose of their own medicine.”
Sources:
More information:
crosses in white circles
From MCCONNELL 178: "The insignia, then as now, of the Red Cross, founded in 1864 as a result of the Geneva Convention on international warfare."
grenadiers
From MCCONNELL 178: "Originally, grenadiers were especially tall soldiers in a regiment employed to throw grenades. This practice was discontinued by the end of the eighteenth century, though the tallest and finest soldiers of their regiments continued to be called 'grenadiers.' After 1858, the only regiment officially referred to by the name was the Grenadier Guards, the First Regiment of the Household Cavalry."
From DANAHAY 88: "originally 'grenade throwers,' but by this time an elite army regiment"
the tower of Shepperton church—it has been replaced by a spire
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 210: This is the Church of St. Nicholas; it is later smashed by the Martians.
pollard willows
From MCCONNELL 180: "willows cut back to the trunk, so as to produce dense masses of branches"
camera
From MCCONNELL 182: "The first portable camera, the Kodak, had been patented by George Eastman in 1888. Wells himself was an ardent amateur photographer."
From DANAHAY 91: "These were very large, box-like cameras."
the four winds of heaven
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 210: Reference to Daniel 7:2: "and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea."
as the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon a century ago
From MCCONNELL 185: "The Lisbon earthquake, on November 1, 1775, produced tremors felt throughout Europe, destroyed almost the entire city, and killed thirty thousand people."
From DANAHAY 94: "Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was almost completely destroyed by a devastating earthquake in 1755."
mackerel sky
From DANAHAY 95: "A mackerel is a seawater fish that has rows of dark markings on its back. The rows of clouds resemble these markings."
Sodom and Gomorrah
From MCCONNELL 188: "In Genesis 18:20-28, the Lord sends fire from heaven to destroy the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah."
“What are we?”
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 211: possible reference to the Kepler epigraph at the beginning of the novel
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
GANGNES: Reference to Proverbs 9:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." This line is part of the cuts made to this installment between the serialized version and the volume. See text comparison page.
hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne?
From STOVER 131: reference to Revelation 6:16
GANGNES: Note that this is the passage DANAHAY cited earlier in the curate's speech.
This lot’ll cost the insurance people a pretty penny, before everything’s settled.” He laughed with an air of the greatest good humour, as he said this.
From STOVER 93-4: "The narrator's neighbor in Woking assumes, with a touching faith in bourgeois property values, that 'the insurance people' will settle for damages once the Martians are defeated."
Horse Guards
From MCCONNELL156: "The famous 'Blues,' or Royal Horse Guards, consolidated in 1819."
From DANAHAY 69: the Royal Horse Guards: elite British army cavalry unit
that a dispute had arisen at the Horse Guards
GANGNES: STOVER corrects HUGHES AND GEDULD's annotation, though does not mention them specifically in the note, despite referencing them in other notes.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 206: "Their notion is that there was an operational or tactical dispute--about how to deal with the situation--among the officers of the elite Horse Guards at the Horse Guard barracks (a building in central London opposite Whitehall). The Horse Guards are the cavalry brigade of the English Household troops (the third regiment of Horse Guards is known as the Royal Horse Guards)."
From STOVER 94: Horse Guards here "is a shorthand reference to the British War Office, located on Horse Guards Parade near Downing Street in London. As Americans refer to the Department of Defense as 'The Pentagon' after its office building, so the British called its War Office 'the Horse Guards.' Not to be confused with the Household Calvary regiment The Royal Horse Guards, even then a tourist attraction when on parade."
fishers of men
From MCCONNELL 156: "In Matthew 4:19 Christ tells Peter and Andrew that He will make them 'fishers of men.'"
Oriental College
From DANAHAY 71: the Oriental Institute
pinnacle of the mosque
From STOVER 96-7: "The mosque was built for Muslim students at the Oriental College, a center for distinguished Indian visitors from the British Raj." Unlike in the novel, the mosque still stands today.
Spotted Dog
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 207: Wells uses this name in place of the name of a real pub: the Princess of Wales.
From DANAHAY 72: the name of a local pub
machine gun
From MCCONNELL 160: "The period from 1890 to the First World War has been called the 'golden age' of the machine gun, and was an era of intensive development of new weapons of all sorts. ... [B]y 1898 technology had produced an amazingly wide range of designs."
sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations
From STOVER 102: "an allusion to the Wimshurst electrostatic induction generator invented in 1880 by James Wimshurst"
the Orphanage, near the crest of the hill
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 208: some readers have mistaken this for the Orphanage that used to be in Oriental Road
From STOVER 103: "The orphanage on the crest of Maybury Hill was not built until 1909; in its place at the time there stood St. Peter's Memorial Home for the aged."
So
GANGNES: The 1898 volume inserts "And in an instant it was gone." and a paragraph break before this sentence. See text comparison page.
College Arms
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 208: a real pub licensed in the 1890s
fiery chaos
From STOVER 109: reference to Revelation 20:9: "and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."
Titan
From MCCONNELL 171: "In Greek myth the Titans were the gigantic and violent pre-Olympian gods whom Zeus vanquished in establishing the rule of reason and order."
saw a star fall from Heaven
GANGNES: A possible reference to, or evocation of, Lucifer as the "Morning Star" falling from Heaven. See Isaiah 14:12 and Luke 10:18. More information at the Wikipedia entry for Lucifer.
Inkerman barracks
From MCCONNELL 154: "The Inkerman Barracks were named for the Battle of Inkerman, where in 1854, English and French troops defeated an attacking Prussian Army. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the armies of Europe were in the process of massive and ominous expansion and reorganization. But the British had a long-standing aversion to the idea of a standing army. Their reorganization, beginning in 1870, emphasized the localization of garrisons and short enlistment terms for civilian volunteers. In 1881 the infantry of the line was remodeled into two-battalion regiments with territorial names."
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 206: located ~2.5 miles southwest of the Horsell sand pits; ~2 miles west of Woking Station
smoke came out of the pit
From HUGHES AND GEDULD: Likely a reference to Revelation 9:2: "and there arose a smoke out of the pit...."
I did not dare to look back
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 203-4: "I did not dare to look back" is another reference to the petrifying gaze of the Gorgon (first referenced in Chapter IV). Gorgons are monsters from Greek myths "whose hair was a tangle of writing snakes." Humans were irresistibly tempted to look at them, but doing so would turn the viewer to stone.
Note: See Medusa as an example.
Times
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 205: Britain's most prestigious daily newspaper, est. 1788. By the time Wells was writing this novel its politics were mostly Liberal Unionist.
GANGNES: The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism lists the Times' date of establishment as 1785 rather than 1788; this discrepancy is due to the fact that it was originally titled the Daily Universal Register before its name change in 1788. In its early days it contained parliamentary reports, foreign news, and advertisements, but soon expanded its contents. Under the editorship of Thomas Barnes in the early 1800s it became a "radical force in the context of the liberalizing reforms of the early part of the [nineteenth] century. It continued to exert a radical influence under subsequent editors (including John Thaddeus Delane). The paper included reports from influential foreign correspondents who covered major European conflicts that were of interest to Britain. When Thomas Cherney became its editor in 1878 and was succeeded in 1884, the paper began to become more conservative and pro-Empire. It has changed ownership but is still published today.
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Daily Telegraph
GANGNES: See annotation on Installment 1 regarding the Telegraph.
argon
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 205: "a chemically inactive, odorless, colorless, gaseous element, no. 18 on the Periodic Table of the Elements. It had just been discovered and was in the news. Wells had written it up in 'The Newly Discovered Element' and 'The Protean Gas,' Saturday Review 79 (February 9 and May 4, 1895): 183-184, 576-577."
GANGNES: The above articles from the Saturday Review are available in scanned facsimile here ("The Newly Discovered Element") and here ("The Protean Gas").
dodo in the Mauritius
From MCCONNELL 125 and 151: The dodo was a large, flightless bird from Mauritius that was hunted into extinction by the seventeenth century. This is the second of two comparisons between the extinction of the dodo and the potential extinction of humans by the Martians; the first is in Chapter I.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 205: "Later, the very idea of such a bird [as the dodo] was ridiculed ... until skeletal remains came to light in 1863 and 1889."
the sensation an ultimatum to Germany would have done
From DANAHAY 64: "Wells compares the opening of the 'war' with the Martians to the reaction that would have accompanied a declaration of war [by Britain] against another country like Germany."
A boy from the town, trenching on Smith’s monopoly, was selling papers with the afternoon’s news.
GANGNES: MCCONNELL is somewhat at odds with HUGHES AND GEDULD and STOVER here; H&G's identification of "Smith" as referring to the newsagent W. H. Smith is important to the print culture of Victorian Britain. I include MCCONNELL to show that critical/annotated editions are not infallible.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 205: "Cutting into or 'poaching on' W. H. Smith's monopoly of selling newspapers inside the station. The chain of W. H. Smith to this day has the exclusive rights to selling newspapers, magazines, and books in m any British railroad stations."
From MCCONNELL 153: "'Trenching' means encroaching. The newsboy is selling his papers at a station where Mr. Smith has a permanent newsstand."
From STOVER 91: "Reference to W.H. Smith, whose chain of stationery stores to this day has the exclusive rights to sell newspapers, books, and magazines in British railway stations."
a squadron of Hussars, two Maxims, and about four hundred men of the Cardigan regiment
From MCCONNELL 154: "Hussars are light cavalry. The Maxim is the Maxim-Vickers, the first truly automatic machine gun, manufactured in the 1880s." The Cardigan regiment is from Cardiganshire: a county in West Wales.
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 206: "The Maxim gun, patented in 1884 by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, was an early form of machine gun. After some modification it was adopted by the British Army in 1889. In the field, Maxims were usually mounted on wheeled carriages. ... The Cardigan regiment was named for Cardiganshire, a western county of Wales located between Fishguard and Aberystwyth."
The Anatomy of Melancholy
From STOVER 49: "Johannes Kepler (d. 1630) laid the foundation of modern astronomy with his calculation of planetary motions, as immortalized in Kepler's laws." Epigraph quote is from a letter to Galileo quoted by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Wells slightly abridged the quote.
More information:
Daily News
GANGNES: Daily News here is changed to Daily Chronicle in the 1898 volume and subsequent editions. The discrepancy between Daily News in the serialized version and Daily Chronicle in the volume could be due to an error on Wells's part that was corrected for the 1898 edition.
The Daily News (1846-1912) was first advertised as a "Morning Newspaper of Liberal Politics and thorough Independence," set up as a rival to the Morning Chronicle. It was edited by Charles Dickens at its launch. The paper "advocated reform in social, political, and economic legislation, fought for a Free Press in supporting the repeal of the Stamp Act, campaigned for impartial dealings with the natives of India and supported Irish Home Rule." It was known for its detailed war reporting, which boosted its circulation.
The Daily Chronicle was a later name (beginning in 1877) of the Clerkenwell News (1855-1930). The paper was "liberal and radical," with a daily column entitled "The Labour Movement" featured in the 1890s. Interestingly, the paper eventually merged with the Daily News (becoming the News Chronicle), but not until 1930--after even the 1925 edition of The War of the Worlds, let alone the 1898 edition.
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across the gulf of space
From STOVER 52: Phrase is from Percival Lowell's Mars (1895).
More information:
beasts that perish
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 197: Reference to Psalm 49: 12 "Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish."
nebular hypothesis
From MCCONNELL 124: the "nebular hypothesis" is Pierre Laplace's (1749-1827) theory that "the solar system originated as a single, densely compacted 'cloud' or 'nebula' of matter."
More information:
oceans
From MCCONNELL 124: The idea that there were, or might have been, oceans on Mars was due to limited telescopic technology during this time.
snowcaps
From DANAHAY p. 42: reference to the theory of "melting icecaps" proposed by Lowell in Mars
struggle for existence
From MCCONNELL 125: "struggle for existence" was a phrase popularized by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859).
More information:
opposition of 1894
From MCCONNELL 126: "opposition" means that Mars is at the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun; the nearest Mars gets to Earth. The opposition of 1877 was when Schiaparelli discovered the Mars canali and an American discovered Mars's moons. The opposition of 1894 allowed for further examinations of Mars.
Lavelle of Java
From MCCONNELL 127: Lavelle of Java is a fictional character whose name Wells derived from "M. Javelle," an associate of Perrotin's who observed a "strange light" on Mars in 1894. The evocation of Java also bears associations to the 1883 eruption of Mt. Krakatoa, which killed 50,000 people in Java.
tronomical exchange
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 200: "During the nineteenth century the Royal Astronomical Society (established 1820) acted as an astronomical exchange for observatories within great Britain."
spectroscope
From MCCONNELL 127: "With a spectroscope it is possible to describe the chemical composition of a substance by analyzing the wavelengths of the light generated by combustion of the substance. It was first demonstrated in 1860."
Daily Telegraph
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 200: The Daily Telegraph was established in 1855 and to this day is still one of Britain's foremost national newspapers.
From MCCONNELL 127: The Daily Telegraph (founded 1855) catered to the middle class; it featured "flamboyant, often sensational journalism."
GANGNES: Contrary to MCCONNELL, the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism writes that the Daily Telegraph (1855-present; founded as the Daily Telegraph and Courier) originally catered to a "wealthy, educated readership" rather than the middle class. Though it became associated with Toryism in the twentieth century, its politics in the nineteenth century were first aligned with the Whigs, especially in its liberal attitude toward foreign policy. This changed somewhat in the 1870s when it supported Benjamin Disraeli, and the paper became more Orientalist under the editorship of Edwin Arnold. The Telegraph also promoted the arts.
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signalling us
From STOVER 60: There was a "signalling mania" during this time; Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin) fed the "mania" through his 1896 article "Intelligible Signals Between Neighbouring Stars."
Denning
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 202: "William Frederick Denning (1848-1931) was the chief authority on cometary systems and meteorites."
Henderson, the London journalist
GANGNES: There are quite a few real "Henderson"s associated with the nineteenth-century press. However, given the role of "Henderson" in this novel, it seems unlikely that the name was meant to refer to any particular journalist.
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Astronomical Exchange
From MCCONNELL 135: A fictional society; the International Astronomical Union was founded in 1919.
Stent, the Astronomer Royal
From STOVER 27: "The Astronomer Royal was director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, but 'Stent' is not recorded as one of them." "Stent" may have been used for political reasons.
Lord Hilton, the lord of Horsell Manor
From HUGHES AND GEDULD 203: "No Horsell Manor or Lord Hilton has been traced"; "the local lord was Lord Onslow of Clandon."
From STOVER 71: The name may have been changed for political reasons.
I could not avert my face from these things
GANGNES: A reference to the irresistible quality of Gorgons; see note on "Gorgon" above.