shootingstar
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2022
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- German
- Home Country
- Germany
- Current Location
- Germany
(The speaker is Loudon Dodd, student of statuary and protagonist of the novel)
One gleam of hope visited me - an order for a bust from a rich Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance; kept me in good humour through the sittings, and, when they were over, carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate well, I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favourable likeness of the being, and I confess I thought my future was assured. But when the bust was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of my country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the European style, informing me (for the first time) of the manners of America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shotgun.
(R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrecker, Chapter V, In Which I Am Down On My Luck In Paris)
What do you take "I should have lain down" to mean in this context? Chiefly, I'd like to know its literal meaning.
One gleam of hope visited me - an order for a bust from a rich Southerner. He was free-handed, jolly of speech, merry of countenance; kept me in good humour through the sittings, and, when they were over, carried me off with him to dinner and the sights of Paris. I ate well, I laid on flesh; by all accounts, I made a favourable likeness of the being, and I confess I thought my future was assured. But when the bust was done, and I had despatched it across the Atlantic, I could never so much as learn of its arrival. The blow felled me; I should have lain down and tried no stroke to right myself, had not the honour of my country been involved. For Dijon improved the opportunity in the European style, informing me (for the first time) of the manners of America: how it was a den of banditti without the smallest rudiment of law or order, and debts could be there only collected with a shotgun.
(R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrecker, Chapter V, In Which I Am Down On My Luck In Paris)
What do you take "I should have lain down" to mean in this context? Chiefly, I'd like to know its literal meaning.
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