John B. Padgett is Associate Professor of English at Brevard College, where he teaches literature, film, and journalism courses and serves as the faculty adviser for the student newspaper. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Mississippi, he created William Faulkner on the Web, the first extensive web resource on Faulkner. He has published articles on Faulkner in The William Faulkner Encyclopedia, Faulkner and Hurston, and Critical Insights: The Sound and the Fury.
Monaghan, one of Bayard Sartoris' fellow aviators during World War I, calls this nightclub a "London dive" when he tells Bayard's current female companion about the fight Bayard got into there over another girl (385).
In both Flags in the Dust and "Ad Astra" wartime London is represented as the setting for Bayard Sartoris' conflicts with other soldiers over the women with whom he is involved. We also use it by default as the place from which the narrator of the short story is telling his tale thirteen years after the war.
In the story Monaghan tells about the War, this "girl" accompanies Bayard Sartoris to a "dive" in London while he is in England training as an aviator. She becomes the occasion for one of Bayard's barroom fights when an Australian captain "just tries to speak to" her (385).
