The Good Boy Page 23
24 In 1927 the Tahiti collided with the ferry Greycliffe in Sydney Harbour. The ferry was cut in two and sank, with the loss of 40 lives. Three years later, in 1930, the Tahiti herself sank off Rarotonga en route to California, all on board being rescued by other ships in the area.
25 In 1940, shortly after leaving Auckland on her way to San Francisco, the Niagara struck a German mine and sank, taking down with her eight tonnes of gold bullion in the ship’s strongroom. All on board were rescued and most of the gold was subsequently retrieved.
26 Renamed Djakarta when the Dutch left the Dutch East Indies in 1949.
27 See Appendix 4
28 The Bank of Australasia, established in 1835, merged in 1951 with the Union Bank and in 1970 with the English, Scottish and Australian Bank (ES&A) to become the ANZ Bank, headquartered in Melbourne.
29 Founded in Dublin in 1815 by Mary Aikenhead.
30 Benediction: a short ceremony where the priest blesses those present by making the sign of the cross over them with a monstrance in his hands.
31 ‘Oh Blessed Host …’ A hymn usually sung at the beginning of the ceremony.
32 A monstrance is a metal cross about 60 centimetres high with a glass-fronted hollow space at the intersection of the upright and arms. The consecrated wafer or Host is placed in this space and the monstrance is then picked up and used to bless the congregations. The metal used in making the monstrance is often gold or silver, and precious stones are often used to adorn it.
33 The Redemptorists, an order of priests founded in Italy in 1732 by St Alphonsus Ligouri.
34 The ancient sadness
35 The pleasure of love lasts but a moment, The sadness of love lasts all life through.
36 See Appendix 4
37 The Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, a religious order founded in Paris in 1540 by the Spaniard St Ignatius Loyola,
38 A native speaker of English who assists the language master by conducting conversation classes with small groups of students. In France there are similar assistants taking conversation classes in the other modern languages taught in the lycées (Italian, German, Spanish, etc.).
39 Surveillants were university students who, in return for board and lodging in the lycée, worked for twenty hours or so per week supervising behaviour in the courtyards, hallways, dormitories and study rooms.
40 Vatican II, or the Second Vatican Council, was held in 1962–65 to modernise the Catholic Church. One change among many was to permit the use in any country of the vernacular instead of Latin in the Mass and other church services.
41 Cistercians: a monastic order founded at Citeaux in Burgundy in 1098.
42 Trappists: a branch of the Cistercians formed at the abbey of Notre Dame de La Trappe in Normandy in 1664 with the aim of observing the original Rule of the order more strictly than was being done in other abbeys at the time.
43 Where love is, there also God is.
44 We travelled on the Messageries Maritimes liner Tahitien which plied the Australia-Panama-France route carrying a couple of hundred passengers and loading copra, coffee, vanilla and nickel ingots at the French colonies of New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Tahiti and the Marquesas, on its way across the Pacific.
45 The surname Wade seems to have been introduced to Ireland in the seventeenth century by troops of that name in Cromwell’s army. It is unclear whether my great-grandmother was descended from the Cromwellian troops or from the Gypsies; either would constitute an interesting contribution to my genetic inheritance.
46 The parents of my great-grandmother, Fanny Sullivan, see Appendix 2
47 Do you mind if I join you?
48 It is an exquisite dessert.
49 USA President J. F. Kennedy Inaugural Address, 1961.
50 The Passage Makers op. cit.
51 The Terryalts were one of the many movements in Ireland, when James had been a young man, agitating often quite violently for agrarian rights for the dispossessed Irish farm workers. James was using the word rather facetiously with his granddaughter and in the sense of a ‘scallywag’ or ‘little troublemaker’.
52 Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire has been the home of the Fiennes family since 1377.
53 Soon after their invasion of Ireland, the English built a barrier, consisting of a palisade and ditch, as a line of demarcation between the area within a radius of 30 or so miles from Dublin, which they tightly controlled, and the rest of Ireland which was not fully subdued until the seventeenth century. The area within the fortification was known as The Pale (from the Latin palus meaning a stake or paling).
54 The Soeurs du Bon-Pasteur, founded in Angers, France, in 1835. See also on page 46.
55 A sound mind in a healthy body, from the Roman poet Juvenal.
56 MLC, a Member of the Legislative Council or Upper House of the Victorian State Parliament.