by Jane Austen
See
Phillipps, K. C., Jane Austen’s English (London: André Deutsch, 1970) Stokes, Myra, The Language of Jane Austen (London: Macmillan, 1991)
EXPLANATORY NOTES
Volume One
CHAPTER I
1. chaise and four: A four-wheeled closed carriage usually drawn by two or four horses, the chaise was the regular family carriage. It held three people who all faced in the direction of travel. An income of at least £800, and preferably £1,000, a year was needed to keep a carriage. Here the carriage itself, but also the number of horses, are indicators of Bingley’s wealth. (See note I, iv: 2.)
2. Michaelmas: 29 September, the feast of St Michael and a quarter-day.
3. parts: In the now largely obsolete sense of OED definition 12: ‘a personal quality or attribute…esp. of an intellectual kind…Abilities, capacities, talents’.
4. nervous: Definitions and cases of ‘nervous’ disorders proliferated during the eighteenth century, due partly to developments in physiological experiment and theory, partly to developments in a vocabulary of sensibility and self-consciousness. They were associated particularly with women, who were believed to be more delicate, and thus more susceptible, emotionally and physically, than men. Austen’s suggestion that Mrs Bennet actually suffers from self-centred hypochondria is a rather unsympathetic version of, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft’s view that women were socially manipulated into thinking of themselves as nervous creatures of sensibility. (See also I, xx.)
CHAPTER II
1. assemblies: Public balls, funded usually by subscription and held in assembly rooms which were sometimes purpose-built but often, in market towns like Meryton, attached to inns. (See note I, iii: 4.)
2. neices: I have followed R. W. Chapman in retaining Austen’s characteristic spelling of words with ‘ie’ (cf. Love and Freindship), when that spelling appears in the first edition of the novel. (See also Note on the Text.)
3. forms of introduction: The strict hierarchical rules which governed social intercourse and stipulated that individuals had to be formally introduced. (Cf. pp. 6, 95, where Mr Collins inappropriately assumes the right to address Darcy; and 332, when Lady Catherine arrives at Longbourn.)
4. make extracts: A reference to the common practice of copying passages from reading into a commonplace book, and an example of the novel’s recurrent interest in female accomplishments. (See also notes I, viii: 9, 11; I, ix: 1.)
CHAPTER III
1. intelligence: News, information.
2. Ten thousand a year: Darcy’s income puts him among the 400 wealthiest families in the country, (See G. E. Mingay, English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 19–24; and General Note 1, above.) For the spelling of ‘mein’, see note I, ii: 2.
3. disgust: Meanings range in this period between mild dislike and, as now, very strong aversion.
4. obliged…to sit down for two dances: The rules governing balls and assemblies were based originally on Beau Nash’s ‘Rules to be observ’d at Bath’, drawn up in 1706 to regulate public gatherings. Partners were changed (if at all – and some assembly rooms insisted on it) after two dances, and same-sex couples were not allowed ‘without permission of the Master of the Ceremonies; nor can permission be given while there are an equal number of Ladies and Gentlemen’ (Thomas Wilson, A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, p. 222). Darcy’s refusal to dance is therefore particularly unfriendly. Having refused an invitation to dance, it was considered very rude for a woman to accept an offer for the same dance from anyone else – as Frances Burney’s heroine discovers in Evelina (Vol. I, Letter XI). (Cf. pp. 26–7, 88–9.)
5. Boulanger: A lively dance imported from France and danced, like most country dances, in a long set of couples. During the nineteenth century it was commonly the fifth and final dance in the quadrille.
6. excessively: In Johnson’s Dictionary (1755), defined simply as: ‘exceedingly; eminently; in a great degree’, but the meaning shifted during the eighteenth century towards the modern suggestion of a transgression of appropriate limits. As used here by Mrs Bennet, it falls into the category of one of the ‘common cant intensifiers of the day’ (Myra Stokes, The Language of Jane Austen, London: Macmillan, 1991, p. 17).
CHAPTER IV
1. candour: As Elizabeth’s description suggests, ‘candour’ and ‘candid’ imply more than simply frankness. Johnson defines ‘candour’ as ‘sweetness of temper; purity of mind; openness; ingenuity; kindness’.
2. very fine ladies: The Bingleys are very wealthy. The Bingley sisters’ independent fortunes of £20,000 would yield a disposable income of £1,000 a year (in comparison with the Bennet sisters’ £1,000 capital); Bingley’s fortune of ‘nearly an hundred thousand pounds’ would yield £5,000 per year, an income comparable with those in Mingay’s category of ‘wealthy gentry’. But this money has been made in trade, and the Bingleys are looking to consolidate their fortune and secure respectability by buying into land. (See G. E. Mingay, English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 19–24; and General Note 1, above.)
3. one of the first private seminaries in town: Boarding schools for girls proliferated during the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Fees varied from around £12 to £100 a year, and the typical curriculum was limited to a range of ‘polite’ accomplishments: English, French, geography, sometimes history, writing, drawing, dancing and music. Such schools were frequently criticized in treatises on female education for encouraging inappropriate aspirations in lower-class girls whose parents could afford to pay for their education, and as exposing girls to ‘the pernicious society of those who are not so well principled as themselves’ – which was seen as including teachers as well as other pupils (Thomas Gisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 1797, 6th edition 1805, p. 38). (See also notes I, ix: 1 and II, vi: 2.)
4. liberty of a manor: The right to shoot game.
CHAPTER V
1. to the King, during his mayoralty: King George III (ruled 1760–1811, d. 1820). The mayor was the head of a municipal corporation or the ruling body of a borough, usually elected annually by councillors from among their own number. Before the local government reform of 1835, boroughs varied hugely in size and in political procedures, and the office of mayor had, according to Jeremy Bentham’s Constitutional Code, ‘in the English chaos about as many different functions attached as there are towns in which a functionary of this denomination is to be found’ (Works, ed. John Bowring, Edinburgh, William Tait, Vol. IX, 1843, p. 613).
An example of Austen’s precise, and satirical, eye for mechanisms of social mobility: the standard royal acknowledgement of Sir William’s local influence and importance as a tradesman encourages him to seek membership of the ‘pseudo-gentry’ (see General Note 1, above).
2. St. James’s: Presentation at court to receive his knighthood.
3. hack chaise: A hired carriage. Again, transport is used as an indicator of wealth – or, here, the comparative lack of it.
4. a pack of foxhounds: An interesting example of masculine consumer aspiration. Packs of hounds dedicated to foxhunting were a comparatively recent phenomenon, dating from around 1750.
CHAPTER VI
1. waited on: Visited.
2. impertinent: In the sense of Johnson’s second definition: ‘importunate; intrusive; meddling’.
3. conceals her affection: The question of whether it was seemly, or prudent, for women to acknowledge affection was a frequent preoccupation in advice literature; for example, John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (1774), one of the most popular conduct books of the time: ‘If you love him, let me advise you never to discover to him the full extent of your love, no not although you marry him. That sufficiently shews your preference, which is all he is intitled to know’ (pp. 87–8).
4. Vingt-un…Commerce: Card games. In both, players have to lay stakes on their chance of making the best ha
nd from cards dealt or available in a pool. Vingt-un involves more risk and requires less strategic attention to others’ moves. But any significance in the comparison might lie simply in a play on the associations of ‘Commerce’. Alistair M. Duckworth has argued that in Pride and Prejudice card games ‘are deftly integrated into the novel’s antithetical structure so as to expose extremes of social conformity and individual freedom’, with games carefully chosen to fit the families that play them (‘“Spillikins, Paper Ships, Riddles, Conundrums, and Cards”: Games in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction’, in John Halperin (ed.), Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 283).
5. continue: In the first edition of the novel which belonged to Cassandra Austen, ‘continue’ is corrected to ‘contrive’ (see Note on the Text), but it seems unnecessary to emend the more subtle expression of the original.
6. keep your breath to cool your porridge: Elizabeth’s idiom, like her behaviour, moves between polite speech and a more colloquial mode – what Caroline Bingley would call ‘a most country town indifference to decorum’ (I, viii).
7. complaisance, complacency: The two words could be synonymous in this period. The OED defines ‘complaisance’ as ‘the action or habit of making oneself agreeable; desire and care to please; compliance with, or deference to, the wishes of others’. It gives ‘disposition or wish to please, or comply with the wishes of others’ as a now obsolete meaning of ‘complacency’. Other definitions of ‘complacency’ possible at the time include simply ‘the fact or state of being pleased with a thing or person; tranquil pleasure or satisfaction in something or some one’. It could, but did not yet necessarily, carry the negative modern implication of self-satisfaction.
The proximity of these closely associated terms, one used by Sir William, one by the authorial voice, is typical of Austen’s witty and finely discriminating use of language and demands careful judgement of Darcy’s feelings and behaviour.
CHAPTER VII
1. entailed in default of heirs male: An entail is any settlement which restricts the terms by which an estate can be bequeathed in subsequent generations. The Bennet estate is entailed ‘in fee tail male’, a frequent common-law arrangement which ensured that only males could inherit. In many cases, complex conveyancing contracts were drawn up to prevent full freehold inheritance by remote relatives such as Mr Collins.
2. Phillips: See Note on the Text on the retention of first-edition variant spellings of proper names.
3. clerk to their father…respectable line of trade: Mrs Bennet is from the upwardly mobile professional class. Her brother and brother-in-law, the businessman and the lawyer, exemplify respectability earned by merit. In contrast, promotion for the army officers with whom Mr Philips is on visiting terms would be dependent largely on patronage or social status.
4. milliner’s shop: Originally meaning an inhabitant of Milan, a milliner was a vendor not just of hats but of ‘fancy’ goods and articles of clothing such as might have come from Milan – ribbons, gloves, etc.
5. militia regiment: For most of Austen’s adult life (1793–1815), England was at war with post-revolutionary France. The militia were a mobile military force, established in response to the fear of invasion, that moved from place to place, largely in the south of England. They were thus distinct from the ‘regulars’ who had fixed camps throughout the country. This new practice of extensive billeting of troops came in for considerable criticism.
6. regimentals of an ensign: The military uniform of an officer. An ensign was the lowest grade of commissioned officer in an infantry regiment.
7. effusions: In the sense of Johnson’s third definition: ‘the act of pouring out words’.
8. sensible: This word carried a wide range of meanings in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from simply physical to intellectual or moral awareness. Here it is used as the equivalent of the modern ‘aware of’ or ‘alert to’.
9. five or six thousand a year: Typically, Mrs Bennet’s estimate of a colonel’s income is somewhat exaggerated.
10. Clarke’s library: Presumably a private subscription or ‘circulating’ library, from which books (particularly novels) could be borrowed for an annual membership fee.
11. coach: A covered carriage which had two facing seats, so could hold six people. The Bennets cannot afford to keep dedicated coach horses. The contention over the use of horses for work or private pleasure anticipates Mary Crawford’s failure to appreciate that horses are needed for the harvest when she wants her harp transported (Mansfield Park, chapter 6).
12. apothecary: Someone who prescribed drugs as well as preparing and selling them, functions later divided between the pharmacist and the medical practitioner. In 1815 an Act of Parliament gave the apothecaries’ society the power to examine and license apothecaries in England and Wales, and only those licensed were allowed to practise: this, together with the gradual splitting of the prescribing and dispensing functions, exemplifies the growth at this period of a professional culture.
13. draughts: Doses of medicine.
CHAPTER VIII
1. at half past six…dinner: In keeping with eighteenth-century practice, Elizabeth has had no meal since breakfast. It was usual to have a substantial late breakfast at around ten in the morning, having already got well on with the day’s tasks, and to have dinner in the mid-afternoon. But from the late eighteenth century mealtimes slowly changed, and the Bingleys follow the custom in fashionable circles of having a later dinner at six thirty. As the gap between breakfast and dinner lengthened, ‘luncheon’ – usually a cold buffet – emerged. Dinner was an elaborate meal, followed by cards, music and conversation and then supper. (See also note I, xxi: 3.)
2. complacency: Here, simply, ‘the fact or state of being pleased with a thing or person’ (OED). (See also note I, vi: 7.)
3. ragout: ‘A dish usually consisting of meat cut in small pieces, stewed with vegetables and highly seasoned’ (OED). One of several examples of the Hursts’ sophisticated metropolitan tastes.
4. blowsy: The OED gives two meanings which might be relevant here: 1. ‘red and coarse complexioned; flushed-looking’; 2. ‘dishevelled, frowsy, slatternly’.
5. petticoat…gown…let down to hide it: The petticoat, worn under a gown or overskirt, was meant to be seen. Elizabeth is probably wearing the standard day-dress of the period, made of one of the new cotton fabrics, muslin or cambric, high-waisted and with an overskirt that fell open in a V-shaped gap from a wrap-over waist, showing a usually matching petticoat.
6. Cheapside: In the City of London and therefore unfashionable and associated with trade. The implicit contrast is with the new residential areas around Oxford Street.
7. sat with her till summoned to coffee: I.e., when the men have left the dining-room to join the ladies.
8. loo: A card game rather like whist, but various numbers can play and not all the cards are dealt. The ‘loo’ is the sum forfeited by any player who fails to win a trick. (See also note I, vi: 4.)
9. paint tables, cover skreens and net purses: Typical decorative (and, by implication, trivial and useless) feminine ‘accomplishments’. Cf. the Bertram sisters in Mansfield Park, whose pastimes include ‘making artificial flowers or wasting gold paper’ (chapter 2).
10. comprehend: In the sense of Johnson’s first definition: ‘to comprise; to include; to contain; to imply’.
11. a woman must have a thorough knowledge of…to deserve the word: This whole discussion is very obviously central to the novel’s recurrent interest in the form and content of female education. (See also notes I, ii: 4; I, iv: 3; I, ix: 1; II, vi: 2.)
12. physicians: Professional medical practitioners, as opposed to local apothecaries. (See note I, vii: 12.)
CHAPTER IX
1. brought up differently: Mrs Bennet’s social aspirations are abundantly clear in her suggestion that her daughters have been educated in the expectation of a leisured existence. Anxieties about inappropriatel
y educated girls, unable to fend for themselves, abound in advice and educational literature of the period. See, for example, Clara Reeve in Plans of Education (1792): ‘What numbers of young ladies…are turned into the world to seek their fortunes; boasting of their good education, ignorant of everything useful, disdaining to match with their equals, aspiring to their superiors, with little or no fortune, unable or unwilling to work for themselves’ (pp. 61–2).
2. the food of love: Cf. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act I, sc. 1: ‘If music be the food of love, play on,/Give me excess of it…’
CHAPTER X
1. piquet: A complicated card game played by two people, using thirty-two cards. (See also note I, vi: 4.)
2. reel: A lively dance, associated with Scotland and sometimes Ireland, usually danced by two couples facing each other and describing a series of figures of eight.
3. the picturesque would be spoilt: Elizabeth refers jokingly to the contemporary cult of the picturesque, a fashion in both landscape appreciation and garden design which emphasized a painterly aesthetic – ‘natural’, asymmetrical lines rather than classical symmetry – and which took particular pleasure in, for example, ivy-clad ruins. It is particularly associated with the travel writings of William Gilpin (see notes II, iv: 1 and II, xix: 1). The allusion here is to Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty…particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmorland (1786), where, in his comments on the prints included in the book, he explains picturesque principles through his ‘doctrine of grouping larger cattle’: ‘Two will hardly combine…But with three, you are almost sure of a good group…Four introduce a new difficulty in grouping…The only way in which they will group well, is to unite three…and to remove the fourth’ (‘Explanation of the Prints’, Vol. II, pp. xii–xiii).
CHAPTER XI
1. white soup: Made from meat stock, egg yolks, ground almonds and cream, and served strengthened with negus (hot sweetened wine and water) as a warming and intoxicating refreshment at balls.