Names in the Raffles stories
Feb. 17th, 2021 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeHaving looked at the use of different names in The Flight of the Heron, I was inspired by some recent discussions on the Crime and Cricket Discord to try doing something similar for the Raffles stories.
I began by going through the stories and collecting all the different names used for Raffles and Bunny. Over the course of the canon, Raffles is called Raffles, A. J. Raffles, Mr Raffles, A. J., Arturo, Mr Maturin, Ralph, Mr Ralph, A. J. R., Mr A. J. Raffles and Arthur; Bunny is called Bunny, Harry, Mr Bunny, Mr Manders and Manders. I actually have a huge table showing all the uses of every name by story, but decided it would be a bit unwieldy for this post, so here's the summarised, whole-canon version. The first table shows the names used in Bunny's first-person narration, the second shows names used by the characters in dialogue and within-story writing (letters, telegrams, etc.).
I've classified names used by Raffles and Bunny themselves and by other characters. It will be noted that Bunny never once uses any form of his own name in narration or dialogue.
Neither character's 'proper' real name ever appears in full—there's no 'Arthur J. Raffles' and no 'Harry Manders'. (Bunny's 'Harry' is probably short for Henry, but this is never confirmed). In fact, there's only one direct use of 'Arthur' in the canon—from Jacques Saillard when she recognises Raffles in 'An Old Flame'. It also appears as 'Arturo' in the Italian story 'The Fate of Faustina'; if it weren't for those brief appearances, the A. in Raffles's initials would be as mysterious as the J.
As for Bunny's real name, 'Harry' is used in only one story, appearing in the unnamed ex-fiancée's letter in 'The Last Word'; and 'Manders' only appears in 'Mr Justice Raffles', from both Camilla and Teddy. Bunny is reticent about his identity, especially in the early stories, using various contrivances to elide or write around occasions where other characters would have used his name—for instance, Lord Amersteth, speaking to him in 'Gentlemen and Players', says "...Mr.——-, Mr.——-,” and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering my name. Bunny doesn't directly tell the readers that he's trying to hide or obscure his real name—he simply quietly avoids it—which is perhaps an interesting contrast to his deliberate and clearly stated avoidance of his ex-fiancée's name in 'Out of Paradise', actually calling her she who shall not be named at one point. Nevertheless the evasion is obvious enough, and why he suddenly drops it in 'Mr Justice Raffles' isn't clear.
Apart from that, then, it's mostly Raffles who refers to Bunny by name (there are a total of 145 uses of Raffles's names by other characters, against 28 for Bunny). Only one character other than Raffles uses the name 'Bunny': the clerk who shows Raffles and Bunny round the Scotland Yard museum in 'The Raffles Relics'. I initially thought this was a bit of an oddity—realistically, I thought, the clerk would have used Bunny's real name, and the narratorial Bunny seemed to be giving up his elegant elisions in favour of simply substituting his nickname for what the clerk actually said. However, I've since thought of another possibility. 'The Raffles Relics' takes place in December 1899, after the first collection of Raffles stories was published; perhaps the clerk has read them (or, more likely given his ignorance of the events, heard about them from other people) and picked up the name 'Bunny' from there. Has Bunny's own writing ensured that this is the name he's remembered by?
'Bunny' is certainly the name Raffles himself prefers. Bunny uses Raffles's names a total of 102 times in dialogue, but Raffles calls Bunny by name a staggering 658 times, and every single one of those 658 is 'Bunny' (once modified to 'Mr Bunny'). We can conclude that Raffles really likes using Bunny's nickname! The origin of the school nickname 'Bunny' is never explained, although it may be a cricketing reference. In any case, Bunny likes Raffles using it too—'The Gift of the Emperor' features the immortal line My nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things went farther... It's a lovely way of quietly showing the intimacy between them and the significance of their history together. Inevitably and rather unfortunately it reminds me of another two characters who were at school together and meet again after many years, when one continues to use the other's old nickname—a relationship with, incidentally, more than a few other similarities to Raffles/Bunny—but that comparison would never do, now, Spud, would it?
These lists also show the levels of familiarity conveyed by different forms of a name: Bunny calls Raffles by his last name only, as do other male friends and social equals like Jack Rutter in 'Wilful Murder', Nipper Nasmyth in 'The Field of Philippi' and Teddy and Mr Garland in 'Mr Justice Raffles', but Raffles more often gets 'Mr' from other characters, including Mackenzie, the staff at the Albany and invariably from ladies like Camilla and the unnamed ex-fiancée (love interests, of course, use his first name, in English or Italian). Similarly, when Bunny's last name appears in 'Mr Justice Raffles', he's 'Manders' to Teddy and 'Mr Manders' to Camilla. Dan Levy in 'Mr Justice Raffles' is an interesting case: he switches between 'Raffles' and 'Mr Raffles', sometimes within the same conversation, depending on how much respect or contempt he wants to convey, notably dropping the 'Mr' entirely when speaking to Bunny about Raffles. And, of course, Bunny, while he doesn't use a nickname (surely Raffles had a school nickname—I wonder what it was?), does call Raffles 'A. J.' at various points, mostly in 'Mr Justice Raffles'. Then there are Raffles's various aliases: besides one-off disguises, he's Mr Maturin at Earl's Court—unlike Raffles, the older and imperious Maturin always gets 'Mr'—and Ralph or Mr Ralph at Ham Common. (Incidentally—in older, posh British use, 'Ralph' should be pronounced to rhyme with 'safe' rather than like 'Alf'. I think this makes it sound less similar to 'Raffles', but never mind).
Their names and nicknames are not the only ways Raffles and Bunny address each other, however, and while collecting names for this post I amused myself by also collecting all the various endearments they use. Over the course of the canon Raffles calls Bunny 'Bunny, my boy', 'My dear Bunny', 'My dear man', 'My dear chap', 'My dear boy', 'My boy', 'Bunny, old chap', 'My good Bunny', 'My dear fellow', 'Bunny, old boy', 'My Bunny', 'My brainy Bunny', 'My dear rabbit', 'My poor, dear Bunny', 'My good fellow', 'Old Bunny', 'My dear, good Bunny', 'My dear old Bunny' and 'My rabbit' (I'm not sure I got all of them...!); in total there are 109 such endearments, and his favourite is 'My dear Bunny' with 46 uses—fully 7% of Raffles's 'Bunny's have a 'my dear' attached. Meanwhile Bunny calls Raffles 'My dear fellow', 'My dear A. J.', 'My dear old chap', 'My dear man' and 'My dear old Raffles', with 10 uses between them; I think we can conclude that Raffles is very dear to him.
One of Raffles's most memorable ways of addressing Bunny is, of course, punning on his nickname with 'rabbit'. Sometimes this is used in playful teasing: he calls Bunny 'You rabbit!' when he fails to recognise Thornaby House from his own back windows in 'The Criminologists' Club', and for incautiously criminal talk in front of a cab driver in 'No Sinecure'. He also calls Bunny 'My dear rabbit' and refers to him affectionately as a rabbit in various places. I'm sure we all agree that the best of these is his "All honour to the sporting rabbit!" in 'The Knees of the Gods'. Interestingly, there is only one use of 'rabbit' in The Amateur Cracksman—in 'The Gift of the Emperor, when Raffles tells Bunny, "You—you’ve grown such a pious rabbit in your old age!"—and its first appearance in The Black Mask is Bunny telling the reader he did not address me as his good rabbit in 'No Sinecure' to underline the seriousness of Raffles's change of status. This implies that Raffles addressing Bunny as his good rabbit is already familiar to the reader—but it won't be at this point, and in fact the specific phrase 'my good rabbit' never appears in the canon. A little odd, but sweet in the implication that Raffles did in fact call Bunny his good rabbit rather often and that Bunny was forgetting he hadn't already told the readers this.
So—there's a lot of good stuff about names in the Raffles canon, and just as with Flight of the Heron I've found it very worthwhile paying detailed attention to them. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on any of this, and of course do point out anything I've missed in my tables and so on (I'm sure my search for names wasn't completely accurate...).
I began by going through the stories and collecting all the different names used for Raffles and Bunny. Over the course of the canon, Raffles is called Raffles, A. J. Raffles, Mr Raffles, A. J., Arturo, Mr Maturin, Ralph, Mr Ralph, A. J. R., Mr A. J. Raffles and Arthur; Bunny is called Bunny, Harry, Mr Bunny, Mr Manders and Manders. I actually have a huge table showing all the uses of every name by story, but decided it would be a bit unwieldy for this post, so here's the summarised, whole-canon version. The first table shows the names used in Bunny's first-person narration, the second shows names used by the characters in dialogue and within-story writing (letters, telegrams, etc.).
| Name in Bunny's narration | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Raffles | 1,858 |
| A. J. Raffles | 15 |
| Mr Maturin | 4 |
| Ralph | 4 |
| Mr Raffles | 3 |
| A. J. | 1 |
| Mr Ralph | 1 |
| Name used by character | Character speaking/writing | Occurrences |
|---|---|---|
| Raffles | Bunny | 87 |
| A. J. | Bunny | 7 |
| Mr Maturin | Bunny | 4 |
| A. J. Raffles | Bunny | 2 |
| Mr Raffles | Bunny | 1 |
| Ralph | Bunny | 1 |
| Raffles | Raffles | 8 |
| Mr Maturin | Raffles | 4 |
| A. J. R. | Raffles | 2 |
| Arturo | Raffles | 2 |
| A. J. | Raffles | 1 |
| Ralph | Raffles | 1 |
| Mr Raffles | Other | 72 |
| Raffles | Other | 56 |
| A. J. Raffles | Other | 4 |
| Arturo | Other | 4 |
| Mr Maturin | Other | 3 |
| A. J. | Other | 2 |
| Mr A. J. Raffles | Other | 2 |
| Mr Ralph | Other | 1 |
| Arthur | Other | 1 |
| Bunny | Raffles | 657 |
| Mr Bunny | Raffles | 1 |
| Mr Manders | Other | 14 |
| Harry | Other | 7 |
| Manders | Other | 4 |
| Bunny | Other | 3 |
I've classified names used by Raffles and Bunny themselves and by other characters. It will be noted that Bunny never once uses any form of his own name in narration or dialogue.
Neither character's 'proper' real name ever appears in full—there's no 'Arthur J. Raffles' and no 'Harry Manders'. (Bunny's 'Harry' is probably short for Henry, but this is never confirmed). In fact, there's only one direct use of 'Arthur' in the canon—from Jacques Saillard when she recognises Raffles in 'An Old Flame'. It also appears as 'Arturo' in the Italian story 'The Fate of Faustina'; if it weren't for those brief appearances, the A. in Raffles's initials would be as mysterious as the J.
As for Bunny's real name, 'Harry' is used in only one story, appearing in the unnamed ex-fiancée's letter in 'The Last Word'; and 'Manders' only appears in 'Mr Justice Raffles', from both Camilla and Teddy. Bunny is reticent about his identity, especially in the early stories, using various contrivances to elide or write around occasions where other characters would have used his name—for instance, Lord Amersteth, speaking to him in 'Gentlemen and Players', says "...Mr.——-, Mr.——-,” and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering my name. Bunny doesn't directly tell the readers that he's trying to hide or obscure his real name—he simply quietly avoids it—which is perhaps an interesting contrast to his deliberate and clearly stated avoidance of his ex-fiancée's name in 'Out of Paradise', actually calling her she who shall not be named at one point. Nevertheless the evasion is obvious enough, and why he suddenly drops it in 'Mr Justice Raffles' isn't clear.
Apart from that, then, it's mostly Raffles who refers to Bunny by name (there are a total of 145 uses of Raffles's names by other characters, against 28 for Bunny). Only one character other than Raffles uses the name 'Bunny': the clerk who shows Raffles and Bunny round the Scotland Yard museum in 'The Raffles Relics'. I initially thought this was a bit of an oddity—realistically, I thought, the clerk would have used Bunny's real name, and the narratorial Bunny seemed to be giving up his elegant elisions in favour of simply substituting his nickname for what the clerk actually said. However, I've since thought of another possibility. 'The Raffles Relics' takes place in December 1899, after the first collection of Raffles stories was published; perhaps the clerk has read them (or, more likely given his ignorance of the events, heard about them from other people) and picked up the name 'Bunny' from there. Has Bunny's own writing ensured that this is the name he's remembered by?
'Bunny' is certainly the name Raffles himself prefers. Bunny uses Raffles's names a total of 102 times in dialogue, but Raffles calls Bunny by name a staggering 658 times, and every single one of those 658 is 'Bunny' (once modified to 'Mr Bunny'). We can conclude that Raffles really likes using Bunny's nickname! The origin of the school nickname 'Bunny' is never explained, although it may be a cricketing reference. In any case, Bunny likes Raffles using it too—'The Gift of the Emperor' features the immortal line My nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things went farther... It's a lovely way of quietly showing the intimacy between them and the significance of their history together. Inevitably and rather unfortunately it reminds me of another two characters who were at school together and meet again after many years, when one continues to use the other's old nickname—a relationship with, incidentally, more than a few other similarities to Raffles/Bunny—
These lists also show the levels of familiarity conveyed by different forms of a name: Bunny calls Raffles by his last name only, as do other male friends and social equals like Jack Rutter in 'Wilful Murder', Nipper Nasmyth in 'The Field of Philippi' and Teddy and Mr Garland in 'Mr Justice Raffles', but Raffles more often gets 'Mr' from other characters, including Mackenzie, the staff at the Albany and invariably from ladies like Camilla and the unnamed ex-fiancée (love interests, of course, use his first name, in English or Italian). Similarly, when Bunny's last name appears in 'Mr Justice Raffles', he's 'Manders' to Teddy and 'Mr Manders' to Camilla. Dan Levy in 'Mr Justice Raffles' is an interesting case: he switches between 'Raffles' and 'Mr Raffles', sometimes within the same conversation, depending on how much respect or contempt he wants to convey, notably dropping the 'Mr' entirely when speaking to Bunny about Raffles. And, of course, Bunny, while he doesn't use a nickname (surely Raffles had a school nickname—I wonder what it was?), does call Raffles 'A. J.' at various points, mostly in 'Mr Justice Raffles'. Then there are Raffles's various aliases: besides one-off disguises, he's Mr Maturin at Earl's Court—unlike Raffles, the older and imperious Maturin always gets 'Mr'—and Ralph or Mr Ralph at Ham Common. (Incidentally—in older, posh British use, 'Ralph' should be pronounced to rhyme with 'safe' rather than like 'Alf'. I think this makes it sound less similar to 'Raffles', but never mind).
Their names and nicknames are not the only ways Raffles and Bunny address each other, however, and while collecting names for this post I amused myself by also collecting all the various endearments they use. Over the course of the canon Raffles calls Bunny 'Bunny, my boy', 'My dear Bunny', 'My dear man', 'My dear chap', 'My dear boy', 'My boy', 'Bunny, old chap', 'My good Bunny', 'My dear fellow', 'Bunny, old boy', 'My Bunny', 'My brainy Bunny', 'My dear rabbit', 'My poor, dear Bunny', 'My good fellow', 'Old Bunny', 'My dear, good Bunny', 'My dear old Bunny' and 'My rabbit' (I'm not sure I got all of them...!); in total there are 109 such endearments, and his favourite is 'My dear Bunny' with 46 uses—fully 7% of Raffles's 'Bunny's have a 'my dear' attached. Meanwhile Bunny calls Raffles 'My dear fellow', 'My dear A. J.', 'My dear old chap', 'My dear man' and 'My dear old Raffles', with 10 uses between them; I think we can conclude that Raffles is very dear to him.
One of Raffles's most memorable ways of addressing Bunny is, of course, punning on his nickname with 'rabbit'. Sometimes this is used in playful teasing: he calls Bunny 'You rabbit!' when he fails to recognise Thornaby House from his own back windows in 'The Criminologists' Club', and for incautiously criminal talk in front of a cab driver in 'No Sinecure'. He also calls Bunny 'My dear rabbit' and refers to him affectionately as a rabbit in various places. I'm sure we all agree that the best of these is his "All honour to the sporting rabbit!" in 'The Knees of the Gods'. Interestingly, there is only one use of 'rabbit' in The Amateur Cracksman—in 'The Gift of the Emperor, when Raffles tells Bunny, "You—you’ve grown such a pious rabbit in your old age!"—and its first appearance in The Black Mask is Bunny telling the reader he did not address me as his good rabbit in 'No Sinecure' to underline the seriousness of Raffles's change of status. This implies that Raffles addressing Bunny as his good rabbit is already familiar to the reader—but it won't be at this point, and in fact the specific phrase 'my good rabbit' never appears in the canon. A little odd, but sweet in the implication that Raffles did in fact call Bunny his good rabbit rather often and that Bunny was forgetting he hadn't already told the readers this.
So—there's a lot of good stuff about names in the Raffles canon, and just as with Flight of the Heron I've found it very worthwhile paying detailed attention to them. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on any of this, and of course do point out anything I've missed in my tables and so on (I'm sure my search for names wasn't completely accurate...).
