(June 4) especially the verse referring to Mr Gladstone: Gladstone, a Liberal, had been prime minister until 1885. At the time the Diary was written Lord Salisbury, a Conservative, was in office.
(June 7) our views of Japan: Japanese fashions became all the rage towards the end of the nineteenth century as contact with the hitherto obscure islands increased following Mutsuhito’s ascent to the throne in 1868 and the abolition of feudalism three years later. Another George Grossmith connection was Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado (1885), set in the imaginary Japanese town of Titipu, which opened with Grossmith playing the Lord High Executioner.
(July 31) “Good old Broadstairs”: Broadstairs, on the Kent coast, 60 miles east of London, has traditionally been quiet and genteel, especially compared to nearby Margate, the main Kentish resort, which even then was considered a touch vulgar. When the Pooters eventually get to Broadstairs (Chapter VI) Pooter wears a frock coat with a straw helmet, much to Lupin’s embarrassment.
(August 3) Carrie bought a parasol about five feet long: Very contemporary. In 1888 5-foot handles were all the rage. Even then Pooter, as behind the times as ever, thinks it ridiculous.
(August 5) and taken the second name “Lupin”: William Pooter’s decision to adopt a name from the distaff side matches Weedon Grossmith’s decision as a young man to drop his given Christian name, Walter, and adopt a family name. Given young Pooter’s interest in the theatre the Grossmiths may have chosen the name Lupin in acknowledgement of the Lupinos, a theatrical family of Italian origin who came to England in 1642.
(August 23) I bought a pair of stags’ heads: There was a Victorian fashion for Caledonian touches thanks partly to the popularity of Walter Scott.
(October 30) I should very much like to know who has wilfully torn the last five or six weeks out of my diary: With Punch having dropped the Diary for two months in the autumn of 1888 this was an amusing way for Pooter to explain the gap.
(November 2) and shouting out, ‘See me dance the polka!’: ‘See Me Dance the Polka’ was George Grossmith’s most successful song composition, in terms of royalties.
(November 6) in the firm of Job Cleanands and Co.: A pun on the name of Frank Burnand, the Punch editor who commissioned The Diary of a Nobody.
(November 10) and totally disapproved of amateur theatricals: Pooter’s misgivings about Lupin’s going on the stage were bizarrely mirrored in real life by George Grossmith’s own attitude to his son, George Grossmith III, who took a role in the W. S. Gilbert/ George Grossmith collaboration, Haste to the Wedding, in 1892, the year the Diary was published in book form. When Grossmith heard that his son had been offered ?2 10/ – he replied, ‘the boy has no experience whatsoever and from what I can judge of him will probably be no good. Give him a pound’.
(November 11) Sarah had accused Mrs Birrell of tearing the pages out of my diary to wrap up some kitchen fat: Some fifty years previously John Stuart Mill had borrowed from Thomas Carlyle the manuscript of his epic work on the French Revolution. Mill’s maid, thinking it was scrap paper, used it for lighting the fire and Carlyle, who by then had lost interest in the work, thinking it finished, was obliged to write it again.
