The Reader’s Gazetteer: K

K is a much easier letter than J. People might get stuck on the th or the ee in my name (in any sensible language that would be an i or an í) but they always get the k right.

I wanted to say something about place names beginning with K having a sense of exoticism that proclaims to us that we’re abroad without subjecting us to the embarrassment of not knowing how to pronounce them. Then I remembered that I grew up between Knighton and Kingsland, with Kington not that far away. And indeed, there are some fictional British places beginning with K: Thomas Hardy has Kennetbridge (it’s about an hour from London Paddington) and Kingsbere (take the train from Waterloo and then the bus from Casterbridge) and Knollsea (train to Anglebury, and then there’s a bus).*

I suppose I must have been thinking of Sophy of Kravonia. It feels wrong to deal with that one before The Prisoner of Zenda, but hey, that’s the way the alphabet works. Kravonia also doesn’t quite meet my requirements in that I still have only the haziest idea of where it actually is:

Kravonia was a rich country, and its geographical position was important. The history of the world seems to show that the standard of civilization and morality demanded of a country depends largely on its richness and the importance of its geographical position.

The neighbour on the west had plenty of mountains, but wanted some fertile plains. The neighbour on the east had fertile plains adjacent to the Kravonian frontier, and would like to hold the mountain line as a protection to them. A far-seeing statesman would have discerned how important correct behavior was to the interests of Kravonia! The great neighbours began to move in the matter, but they moved slowly. They had to see that their own keen sense of morality was not opposed to the keen sense of morality of other great nations. The right to feel specially outraged is a matter for diplomatic negotiations, often, no doubt, of great delicacy.

The publication date of 1906 might provide a clue, but then again it might not. Any ideas?

I’ll look at the careful placing of Ruritania, Strelsau and Zenda later in the series. In the meantime, I do rather get the sense that Anthony Hope had been asked for another Zenda and was phoning it in. Or sending himself up. (Sophy, the Rudolf Rassendyll analogue, is a kitchen maid from Essex with a flair for languages, which I suppose makes her exactly as qualified to run a country as an idle younger son of the aristocracy. The prince is interested in one thing, and that one thing is big guns.) Never mind.

We return to The House of the Four Winds to visit Kremisch and Krovolin. Kremisch is just this side of the border from Evallonia – which border isn’t specified, since John Buchan has gone to quite a lot of trouble to get us there without knowing, or really caring, where exactly we are. And, like many places in Buchan’s oeuvre, it has a really, really good pub:

The inn at Kremisch, the Stag with the Two Heads, has an upper room so bowed with age that it leans drunkenly over the village street. It is a bare place, which must be chilly in winter, for the old casement has many chinks in it, and the china stove does not look efficient, and the rough beechen table, marked by many beer mugs, and the seats of beechwood and hide are scarcely luxurious. But on this summer night to one who had been tramping all day on roads deep in white dust under a merciless sun it seemed a haven of ease. Jaikie had eaten an admirable supper on a corner of the table, a supper of cold ham, an omelet, hot toasted rye-cakes and a seductive cheese. He had drunk wine tapped from a barrel and cold as water from a mountain spring, and had concluded with coffee and cream in a blue cup as large as a basin. Now he could light his pipe and watch the green dusk deepen behind the onion spire of the village church.

Krovolin is the monarchist headquarters in Evallonia, and a good distance from the border:

The great forest of St Sylvester lies like a fur over the patch of country through which the little river Silf -the Amnis Silvestris of the Romans – winds to the Rave. At the eastern end, near the Silf’s junction with the main river, stands the considerable town of Krovolin; south of it stretch downs studded with the ugly headgear of oil wells; and west is the containing wall of the mountains. It is pierced by one grand highway, and seamed with lesser roads, many of them only grassy alleys among the beeches.

We spend quite a lot of the book getting there, and then get a somewhat fragmentary picture of the town, fitted in around the action:

The cars turned along the edge of the water over vile cobbles, and presently wove their way into a maze of ancient squalor. This was the Krovolin of the Middle Ages, narrow lanes with high houses on both sides, the tops of which bent forward to leave only a slender ribbon of sky.

There’s a Street of the White Peacock, and a hotel called the Three Kings of the East. Which, by the way, has a ‘pleasant restaurant’, but there’s no word on the menu. Maybe one would do better to stay in Kremisch after all. On the other hand, we haven’t got to Tarta yet…

Books mentioned in this post

The House of the Four Winds, John Buchan

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

The Hand of Ethelberta, Thomas Hardy

Sophy of Kravonia, Anthony Hope

*I should say that I’m relying on the Wikipedia page for Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Traveline for this guidance. The author of this blog takes no responsibility etc etc. Besides, do you really want to end up in a Hardy novel?

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