Swung lourdily

Stephen sees two middle-aged, unfashionable women coming down the steps to the sand, and the narrative adopts his perspective and thoughts: "Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach." Lourdily seems to mean "heavily" (from lourd in French, a language that Stephen drops into throughout Proteus), and gamp appears to mean "umbrella" because Mrs. Gamp, the umbrella-carrying nurse in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, carries one.

John Hunt 2015


Watercolor sketch of Mrs. Sairey Gamp by Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke), the famous illustrator of Dickens characters. Source: www.wordsmith.org.