Lot’s wife … that fatal backward glance at the perishing city: see Genesis 19: 26. Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she disobeyed the Angels and looked back at the burning city of Sodom.
sat below the salt … linsey-woolsey: it was customary for people of humbler status to sit at the lower part of the table, below the salt which was placed at its centre. Another indicator of humble social status, linsey-woolsey is a rough cloth made of wool and flax.
Wedgwood: one of Britain’s largest ceramic producers, founded by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759.
King of Terrors: death. See Proverbs 18: 14: ‘His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.’
Beatrice … Benedick: Shakespeare’s combative lovers in Much Ado About Nothing.
shell-jackets and calico helmets: short single-breasted jackets with a high collar worn by infantry officers in the 1850s and 1860s; helmets covered with quilted white calico introduced in the British army in the 1860s.
Oudh: a region in central India whose annexation by the British in 1856 was one of the causes of the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
patent refrigerator: American inventor Jacob Perkins obtained the first patent for a compact refrigerator in 1824. Further patents for domestic refrigeration systems and ice-makers were issued in the 1840s and 1850s.
green fat … Marcus Curtius: the green gelatinous part of a turtle, highly prized by gourmets, forms part of the turtle soup which is traditionally served at banquets of the City of London. According to Roman legend Marcus Curtius saved his people by leaping into a chasm on horseback.
Madame Levison’s enamel, and far less enduring: see note to p. 190.
Burnous: a hooded cloak of a design traditionally worn by Arabs.
the prophet of Korazin: Hakim ben Allah wore a veil to conceal a missing eye, but his followers claimed that it was to screen his dazzling brightness. The veiled prophet is the subject of the first poetical tale in Thomas Moore’s narrative poem Lallah Rooke: An Oriental Romance (1817).
massacre of Saint Bartholomew: the massacre of French Huguenots in Paris on St Bartholomew’s Eve and Day (24/5 April) 1572, instigated by Catherine de’ Medici and carried out by Catholic nobles.
Her madness … hour of my birth: see note to p. 237 on Victorian theories on the hereditary transmission of madness. Postnatal or puerperal insanity was one of the main reasons for female admissions to asylums; see Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980 (London: Virago, 1985).
isinglass: a form of gelatin from some freshwater fishes used in cookery and and for clarifying liquors.
February: on p. 315 Robert is described as listening to the ‘low wail of the March wind’, and on p. 318 the following day is described as a March day.
Iron Mask: there has been much speculation about the identity of the masked man who was imprisoned for thirty-four years during the reign of Louis XIV. In his novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later (1847–50), Alexandre Dumas propounded the theory that he was the King’s illegitimate older brother. The English translation of the final volume of this novel was The Man in the Iron Mask.
Jack Ketch: a notorious seventeenth-century public executioner whose name was adopted as the generic name for the hangman.
cheval-glass: a long mirror mounted so as to swivel in its frame.
Benson-made: see note to p. 258.
the esclandre of a Chancery suit: the scandal of a petition made to the Court of Chancery. The families or legal representatives of people alleged to be mad could apply to the Court of Chancery to have their affairs placed under its jurisdiction. Irrespective of whether a petition to Chancery was involved, under the 1828 Madhouse Act a person had to be interviewed separately by two medical practitioners before he or she could be committed to an asylum at home or abroad. Braddon later acknowledged her uncertainties about the committal procedure: ‘I had no-one to consult about the “Maison de Santé” & it was only when the book was printed that I heard from a lady whose husband was an inmate in such a house, that what I had done abroad was more impossible than it would have been at home’ (Robert Lee Wolff, ‘Devoted Disciple: The Letters of Mary Elizabeth Braddon to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1862–1873’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 22 (1974), 12).
Villebrumeuse: this French name translates literally as ‘foggy town’.
maison de santé: a private nursing home or asylum.
Bradshaw: the publisher and printer George Bradshaw (1801–53) developed and published an extensive series of a railway timetables from 1839.
diligence: a public stagecoach which travelled at speed. By the mid-nineteenth century the term was used mainly in relation to transport on the continent of Europe.
trottoir: pavement.
coupé: the front or after compartment of a Continental diligence.
entre cour et jardin: between a courtyard and a garden.
they manage these things better in France: a reference to the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1765–6)—‘They order, said I, this matter better in France.’ Lady Audley is also probably referring to Belgium’s reputation for leading reforms in the treatment of mental illnesses.
No. 14, Bis: number 14a.
‘the Mars’: Mars is the Roman god of war.
Paulde Kock: see note to p. 183.
“Chough and Crow”: possibly a reference to ‘The Outlaw’s Song’ from Joanna Baillie’s Gothic tragedy Orra (1812), which begins: ‘The chough and the crow to roost are gone’.
the story of a man … unhallowed hiding-place: given the later reference to Wilkie Collins, Robert could be thinking of Collins’s story ‘Mad Monkton’, first published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1855 and subsequently in the collection The Queen of Hearts (1859), about a man who is possessed by the idea that he must find the body of his dead uncle which lies buried in an unmarked grave.
Wilkie Collins: (1824–99), noted for his sensation novels and ghostly tales.
Nonpareil and Chambertin, Pomard and Champagne: the last three are names of French wines. Nonpareil means without equal.
that almost terrible picture of Dr Samuel Johnson: in June 1766 Samuel Johnson (see note to p. 157), who was prone to melancholia, suffered a complete mental collapse.
Bozzy: James Boswell (1740–95), lawyer, diarist, and author, Johnson’s friend and biographer.
Oliver: Oliver Goldsmith (1728?–74), Anglo-Irish poet and playwright.
Garrick: David Garrick (1717–79), actor and playwright.
Reynolds: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), portrait and history painter, art theorist, and founder of the Literary Club (for dining and conversation), of which Johnson and Goldsmith were members.
Mr and Mrs Thrale … preservation of his wits: the terrible scene of Johnson’s mental collapse in which he prostrated himself before a clergyman, was witnessed by his friends Hester Lynch Thrale and her first husband, the brewer and politician Henry Thrale. The scene was later described in Hester’s Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).
the brewer’s widow … the Italian singer: three years after Henry Thrale’s death, and much to the surprise of her friends, Hester married the Italian musician Gabriel Mario Piozzi.
Un revenant en fiacre: a ghost in a cab.
moderator lamp: a lamp in which the flow of oil was regulated to give an even light. The sentence refers to a type of drawing-room comedy.
Mrs Abington: Frances Abington (nee Barton, 1737–1815), a notable actress who worked with David Garrick and, despite her humble origins, enjoyed considerable social success.
the O’Neil: Eliza O’Neil (1791–1872), famous Irish actress who married an MP who was later made a Lord.
Mrs Beverley … insulted by Stukeley: O’Neil played Mrs Beverley in Edward Moore’s The Gamester. Stukeley is another character in the play.
the new art of Madame Rachel: see notes to pp. 190 and 286. This reference c
ould also be making a distinction between the new cosmetic art of Madame Rachel Levison and the older art of the famous French actress Mademoiselle Rachel (the Swiss-born Eliza Félix) who made a great impact when she appeared on the London stage in the 1840s and mid-1850s.
blue pill and colocynth, or salts and senna: all forms of laxative.
poor-law guardians: under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act the relief of the poor in England and Wales became the responsibility of Poor Law Unions which were overseen by Boards of Guardians comprising magistrates and members elected by ratepayers.
eight-day clock: a clock that runs for eight days after each winding.
tracks: religious tracts.
Banshee: in Irish mythology, a female spirit who wails when someone is about to die.
a mort o’ times: (dialect) many times. Mr Peggotty uses the same expression in chapter 46 of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
Freemasons … Foresters … Buffalers … Odd-fellers: examples of friendly societies, some of which have codes of secrecy.
press bedstead: a folding bed designed to be tidied away into a wardrobe or cupboard (press).
a pack o’gammon: a load of ridiculous nonsense.
palace of Armida: in Torquato Tasso’s poem Jerusalem Delivered Armida, the niece of the King of Damascus, lures Rinaldo, one of the Christian soldiers besieging Jerusalem, into her enchanted garden. An Armida’s Palace has become a generic term for an illusory or visionary enchanted palace.
houris: the beautiful women who are said to await devout Muslim men in Paradise.
flâneur: a stroller of the city streets.
Michel Lévy’s publications: Lévy was an important publisher of French fiction.
ornée: decorated.
dun: a creditor or a debt-collector.
wherries: a wherry is a light rowing boat.
maladie de langueur: an old name for anaemia; listlessness or depression.
Templar: someone occupying chambers in the Inner or Middle Temple.
‘the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread’: ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread’ (Psalm 37: 25).
1 Clive Holland, ‘Fifty Years of Novel Writing’, Pall Mall Magazine, 14 (1911), 697–709: 702.
2 Ibid.
3 M. E. Braddon, ‘My First Novel: The Trail of the Serpent’, Idler, 3 (1893), 19–30: 20 and 23.
4 See Jennifer Carnell, The Literary Lives of M. E. Braddon (Hastings: The Sensation Press, 2000), ch. 1.
5 M. E. Braddon, ‘The Woman I Remember’, in T. Catling (ed.), The Press Album (London: John Murray, 1909), 5, cited in Robert Lee Wolff, Sensational Victorian: The Life and Fiction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon (New York: Garland Publishing, 1979), 45.
6 Dominated by Mudie’s (founded in 1842) and W. H. Smith (founded in 1860), circulating libraries lent out books by the volume to members able to afford the annual subscription. Their owners exerted an extraordinary influence on the success or failure of a particular novel. Their notions of morality and ‘respectable reading’ exercised a particularly strong influence on the nature of fiction in the mid-nineteenth century, inducing many novelists to practise a form of self-censorship. Smith also owned a chain of bookstalls on railway stations, a very important means of distributing fiction in the 1860s. In fact the rise of the sensation novel was seen by many nineteenth-century commentators as part of the growth of ‘railway reading’, and the need to provide commuters and other passengers with fast-paced fiction to divert them on their journey.
7 Quoted in Wolff, Sensational Victorian, 135.
8 Letter to Bulwer Lytton, quoted ibid. 162.
9 Letter to Edmund Yates, quoted ibid. 137.
10 For further discussion of Braddon’s campaign against the anti-sensationalists see Solveig Robinson, ‘Editing Belgravia: M. E. Braddon’s Defense of “Light Literature”’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 28 (1995), 109–22; Jennifer Phegley, Educating the Proper Woman Reader: Victorian Family Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health of the Nation (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2004).
11 See Jennifer Carnell and Graham Law, ‘“Our Author”: Braddon in the Provincial Weeklies’, in Marlene Tromp, Pamela Gilbert, and Aeron Haynie (eds.), Beyond Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).
12 Quoted in Wolff, Sensational Victorian, 275.
13 ‘Miss Braddon at Home’, Daily Telegraph, 4 Oct. 1913, p. 9.
14 [Margaret Oliphant], ‘Novels’, Blackwoods, 102 (1867), 257–80: 263.
15 Unsigned review of Lady Audley’s Secret by E. S. Dallas, The Times, 18 Nov. 1862, p. 4.
16 See [Margaret Oliphant], ‘Sensational Novels’, Blackwoods, 91 (1862), 564–80.
17 Henry James, ‘Miss Braddon’, The Nation, 9 Nov. 1865, p. 594.
18 Anthea Trodd, Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (London: Macmillan, 1989), 7–8.
19 [Dallas], The Times, 18 Nov. 1862, p. 4.
20 [Oliphant], ‘Novels’, 264.
21 [Dallas], The Times, 18 Nov. 1862, p. 4.
22 [Oliphant], ‘Novels’, 259.
23 [W. Fraser Rae], ‘Sensation Novelists: Miss Braddon’, North British Review, 43 (1865), 180–204: 183.
24 ‘Sensation’, Literary Times, 9 May 1863, pp. 102–3: 102.
25 Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies (1871), ch. 1.
26 H. L. Mansel, ‘Sensation Novels’, Quarterly Review, 113 (1863), 481–514: 495.
27 Ibid. 481.
28 ‘Our Female Sensation Novelists’, Christian Remembrancer, 46 (1864), 209–36: 210.
29 The Sensation Times, quoted by K. Tillotson, in her introduction to The Woman in White (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. xiii.
30 [Mansel], ‘Sensation Novels’, 481.
31 [Rae], ‘Sensation Novelists’, 183.
32 ‘Our Female Sensation Novelists’, 210.
33 See [Oliphant], ‘Sensational Novels’, 565.
34 [Mansel], ‘Sensation Novels’, 486.
35 ‘Novels and Life’, Saturday Review, 13 Feb. 1864, p. 189.
36 [Mansel], ‘Sensation Novels’, 500.
37 See Rebecca Gill, ‘The Imperial Anxieties of a Nineteenth-Century Bigamy Case’, History Workshop Journal, 57 (2004), 58–78.
38 [Mansel], ‘Sensation Novels’, 483.
39 Armadale, bk. 4, ch. 3.
40 Nicholas Daly, Literature, Technology and Modernity, 1860–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 34.
41 Ibid. 7.
42 Ibid. 17.
43 See Randolph Ivy, ‘M. E. Braddon in the 1860s: Clarifications and Corrections’, Library, 8 (2007), 60–9.
1 Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret, ed. Natalie M. Houston (Peter-borough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003), 34. As far as I am aware, Houston’s edition was the first to note this variant.
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