No 42 -- Summer 1994 Edited by Michael Walters
KENSINGTON GORE
by Michael Walters
In GASBAG vol 23, no. 4, issue 182, March/April 1992, there appeared the most risible article I have ever seen. In it, the author, who had the unlikely name of Silvio Aurora, attempted to show that RUDDYGORE means "Reddish triangle", and has no connection with blood. "Gore", he claimed, was derived not from the Anglo-Saxon "gor", but from "gar" a spear, and hence "gore" as in Kensington Gore, originally a triangle of land in Kensington. I read this article with mounting disbelief, and wondered if the author was trying to be funny. I even showed it to a friend, who replied that he would love to believe that it was a spoof article, but that from the way the author wrote it was clear that he had absolutely no sense of humour. I hesitated at the thought of hurting Mr. Aurora's feelings by writing to suggest that what he had written was a load of rubbish, and decided, after a great deal of serious thought, that the kindest way to handle the matter was to write a follow up article pretending that it was a humorous article, and using this to point out errors. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to receive a letter saying that the article had been shown to Mr. Aurora, who was deeply offended by the tone (which seemed to prove what my friend had said). I was left with no alternative but to withdraw it, but reserve my right to print it in GG.
-----------
The article by Silvio Aurora is a superb spoof article (did anyone notice that it appeared in the April issue?) but it is just conceivable that some readers may have ill-advisedly taken it seriously, so I feel it may be as well to put the facts straight.
Mr. Aurora, has actually done something very clever. For each of the two halves of the word Ruddygore he has pointed out that there are only two possible meanings. He then dismisses one of these without any sort of evidence, but in such a way as to leave the average reader quite satisfied, and then devotes the rest of the article to explaining ingeniously why he has adopted the other. For example, he points out that one of the derivations of "gore" is from "gor" meaning "dung" and hence "mud", "filth" or (most importantly) "blood". He then says "None of these can be taken seriously as possible meanings for the "gore" in Ruddygore". But he gives no reason for this statement. Yet "blood" in this context is precisely what the word does mean.
In fact there can be no possible doubt whatever that Ruddygore means precisely what one would take it to mean, "Bloody blood". The idea that it refers to a reddish triangle is most charmingly quaint. The opera is a satire on Victorian melodrama, the type of play which was referred to euphemistically in Gilbert's day, as in our own, as "blood and gore", "blood and guts" or "blood and thunder". There was usually a great deal of blood in such plays - often they ended with heaps of dead bodies all over the stage. By contrast of course, Ruddygore contains none of this; it is a milk-and-water melodrama, and Gilbert's joke was to call it by the inappropriate name of Ruddygore when in fact it was nothing of the kind.
When critics and public objected to the name as indecent, Gilbert's irritable retort about Kensington Gore was quite simply, that if they were offended by the word "gore" in this context he would offer to alter it to utilise "gore" in another sense, a context in which it did not mean blood. The implication here is, well what's in a word? It was not, of course, any sort of indication that Gilbert had intended to use the word in its other meaning from the start.
The current use of the name "Kensington Gore" to apply to a street in London is in no way aberrant, as claimed by Mr. Aurora, it is merely the normal corruption of term and word that has occurred in placenames throughout the history of England (e.g. the district now known as Marylebone was formerly Mary le Bon, and it is alleged that Elephant and Castle is a corruption of Infanta of Castile (the name of an inn). Whatever may have been the original meaning of Kensington Gore (and I do not doubt that Mr. Aurora is correct in his detailed researches), it seems pretty clear that in Gilbert's day, as in ours, the term meant simply the street. Gilbert's use of it, therefore, meant nothing more than that it was something innocuous. Mr. Aurora's mocking references to "Healthyblood Castle" or "Baronet of Redblood" become superfluous (yet not needful).
It is very easy to read into a work interpretations that were not intended by the author. Probably someone could come up with some very convincing arguments that Mr. Aurora's name obviously indicates that he was born in a wood at dawn?
Web page created 31 July 1998