Ivalunk

[steepholm]

E. Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet (1906) is full of local and topical references that are fun to track down, but I'm currently stumped by this passage from the beginning of Chapter 14:

Nurse having gone to tea with a friend out Ivalunk way they were playing 'devil in the dark' (259)

Now, what or where is Ivalunk? Google is no help, and no more is the OED. It's possible that Nesbit is humorously adopting a phonetic spelling to reflect the Nurse's London pronunciation, but even then I'm having trouble seeing what the word behind it is. 'Ivalunk' doesn't bear much resemblance to any London district I can think of.

Quite possibly I'm missing something very obvious here: feel free to put me out of my misery.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Of that chapter? There's one really interesting bit when the Queen decides that all the Babylonian artefacts in the Museum belong to her, and uses magic to make them come out to her through its august portals, much to the annoyance of the Museum staff. I think that's a wonderful anticipation of debates about appropriation (e.g. the Elgin Marbles).

The book as a whole is marvellous - hence its crude anti-Semitism shocks all the more.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the chapter with the great part about how the working classes of London don't rebel despite their awful conditions because they have the vote, and the Queen says "Oh, I see, it's a kind of toy"? It's to my memory a great socialist dismissal of suffrage.

I find the anti-Semitism in The Story of the Treasure-Seekers to be the most jarring and gratuitous, but I haven't read Amulet since I was a kid, so it may have dulled with age.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's there too!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

And of course the nice curator is Wallis Budge, isn't he? with whom Nesbit had an affair? I'm always reminded of the bit in I Capture the Castle, where Topaz is not at all reassured by the news that her husband is going to the British Museum rather than seeing Mrs. Cotton, because "People do nothing but use it for assignations -- I met him there myself once, in the mummy room."

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Every time I see Budge's name, I can't help but think of Elizabeth Peters's assessment of him via Amelia Peabody Emerson and her husband.