(c) "She [Eleanor] comes across as highly gifted but anarchic, a Pippi Longstocking forerunner, who addresses her father with a 'Halloo, old boy' and insists that she has two brains. 'Forward' is the old-fashioned term for such a child, but Marx was the kind of indulgent Rousseauian parent who found this sort of thing delightful."
(i) Pippi Longstocking
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippi_Longstocking
(ii) Halloo (exclamation): "used to attract someone’s attention"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/halloo
This word is NOT found in US-based www.m-w.com.
(iii)
(A) forward (adj): ""lacking modesty or reserve : brash"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forward
(b) forward (adj): "presumptuous, impertinent, or bold <a rude, forward child>"
Random House Dictionary
dictionary.reference.com/browse/forward
(iv) Emile, or On Education, a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published in 1762 (about raising a fictional boy named Emile)
(d) "While the bookcases in Grafton Terrace, their second home, 'could be measured in feet, the stories within them . . . could be "measured by miles," ' Ms Holmes writes, quoting Eleanor’s memoir."
Google "Grafton Terrace" and one will find a map of London pops up with a street of that name, about 200 meters long.
(e) "She [Eleanor] was particularly keen on 'the soliloquy of Richard III ("I can smile and smile and be a villain," which I KNOW I loved because I had to have a knife in my hand to say it!)' The smile and smile and be a villain bit is actually from 'Hamlet,' but never mind."
(i) One May Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain. enotes, undated
www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/one-may-smile-smile-villain
(Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 105–109)
(ii) I will discuss Richard III in the next posting.
(f) "At age 11 * * * She [Eleanor] started attending the South Hampstead College for Ladies, which focused more on deportment than book learning. With her dislike of authority, her political opinions and her propensity for doing cartwheels, she must have been the pupil from hell. Girls’ education at this point had little to offer someone of her intelligence, Ms Holmes notes, forcing her to become 'a tireless autodidact.'”
(i) deportment (n): "the manner in which one conducts oneself : behavior"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deportment
(ii) autodidact (n; from Greek)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autodidact |