Oxford World’s Classics

by Jane Austen

  profound Curtesy: that is, a very low curtsy, indicating extreme deference and respect.

  kick one another … slightest provocation: such violence is common in Austen’s early writings, and was evidently a family joke. In The Loiterer, a humorous weekly periodical launched on Saturday 31 Jan. 1789 by JA’s eldest brother, James, and written largely by him and his younger brother Henry, men are on two occasions kicked downstairs (The Loiterer, no. 4 (21 Feb. 1789); no. 24 (11 July 1789)). The periodical ran for sixty issues, until Mar. 1790, and focused on university matters (see also Appendix 1). Cf. Mrs Kickabout in ‘Lesley-Castle’ and Sir William Gascoigne in ‘The History of England’. In Samuel Richardson’s Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. In a series of familiar letters, from a beautiful young Damsel, to her parents, 2 vols. (dated 1741 [pub. 1740]), Mr B threatens to throw Mrs Jervis out of the window; after her marriage, Pamela escapes her brutal sister-in-law via the window (i, letter 25; ii, ‘tuesday Morning, Eleven O’Clock’).

  5 ran off with the Coachman: Tristram Shandy’s great aunt Dinah marries and has a child by her coachman (Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, 9 vols. (1759–67), i, ch. 21). Miss Dickins, in ‘Jack & Alice’, elopes with the butler (p. 14). Richardson’s Mr B makes a comparably socially lopsided match when he marries his servant, Pamela, a union that is mocked in Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741). Fielding himself went on to marry his deceased first wife’s maid, who was pregnant.

  little more than 63: here, old age is presented as extreme youth; in ‘The three Sisters’, the joke is reversed: Mr Watts (aged 32) is ‘quite an old Man’ (p. 52). Colonel Brandon (aged 35) in S&S strikes Marianne as ‘an old bachelor’, while a woman of 27 ‘can never hope to feel or inspire affection again’ (ch. 8).

  parents of Frederic proposed … between them: in 18th-century fiction, parents typically impede the union of two lovers by withholding their consent; here, in proposing the marriage of Frederic and Elfrida, they are doing quite the opposite—without, however, ascertaining the wishes of the two parties themselves. Cf. ‘Love and Friendship’, pp. 72–3.

  the naming of the Day: traditionally, it was the bride’s prerogative to choose the date of the wedding.

  Patches, Powder, Pomatum & Paint: an echo of the most celebrated list in 18th-century literature: ‘Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux’ (The Rape of the Lock, canto 1, l. 138). ‘Pomatum’ is an ointment for the skin or hair. JA originally wrote ‘Rouge, Powder, Pomatum & Paint’; by changing ‘Rouge’ to ‘Patches’ she heightens the comic alliteration and makes the allusion to Pope more overt.

  6 postilion: ‘A person who rides the (leading) nearside (left-hand side) horse drawing a coach or carriage, esp. when one pair only is used and there is no coachman. Also in extended use: an outrider for a carriage’ (OED). Cf. the postilion in ‘Henry & Eliza’ and ‘The first Act of a Comedy’.

  Condescension: ‘Voluntary submission to equality with inferiors’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary). Here, the word appears in a benign sense, but JA’s lifetime spans the period in which the negative sense is beginning to predominate: in P&P, Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s condescension, as fawningly praised by Mr Collins, comes closer to the modern understanding of the word. Cf. also ‘condescension’ in ‘Henry & Eliza’ (p. 29) and ‘Lesley-Castle’ (p. 106).

  Portland Place: a magnificent, unusually wide street in central London, laid out by Robert and James Adam for the Duke of Portland in the late 18th century; frequently a backdrop in fiction of the period (see e.g. Agnes Maria Bennett’s Anna: or Memoirs of a Welch Heiress, 4 vols. (1785), ii, ch. 43). It originally ran north from the gardens of a detached mansion called Foley House. In the early 19th century, Portland Place was incorporated into the royal route from Carlton House to Regent’s Park, developed for the Prince Regent by John Nash.

  seated … in one chair: cf. ‘The Visit’ (act 2, scene 1), in which only six chairs are available for eight people, and two men sit in ladies’ laps. JA is echoing a weird moment in The Vicar of Wakefield, in which ‘We happened not to have chairs enough for the whole company; but Mr. Thornhill immediately proposed that every gentleman should sit in a lady’s lap’ (i, ch. 9). The Vicar, unsurprisingly, disapproves of the suggestion.

  old pink Coat: in MP, the stiff and pompous Mr Rushworth plans to don a ‘pink satin cloak’ as Count Cassel in Lovers’ Vows (ch. 15). JA possibly refers here to a hunting coat. Thomas Pink, an 18th-century tailor in Mayfair, designed the coat worn by Masters of Foxhounds, whippers-in, huntsmen and other hunt staff. The coat was made of red cloth but known as ‘pink’ after its originator.

  a post-chaise [footnote]: JA’s note; it tells us, succinctly, why Charlotte’s carriage is ‘lovely’. A ‘post chaise’ was the most expensive form of hired transport: ‘A horse-drawn, usually four-wheeled carriage (in Britain usually having a closed body, the driver or postilion riding on one of the horses) used for carrying mail and passengers, esp. in the 18th and early 19th centuries’ (OED). Elsewhere in the teenage writings, there is only one other authorial note—to ‘Letter the first’ in ‘Lesley-Castle’.

  7 new blue coat: a very fashionable item, partly thanks to the blue frock coat worn by the suicidal hero of Goethe’s best-selling sentimental epistolary novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther] (1774). The naval hero of Catharine; or, The Wood of Llewellyn, 2 vols. (1788) is admired for ‘the splendour of his blue coat, and milk white lapels’, as contrasted unfavourably with the ‘russet frocks’ of the locals (i, p. 15). Bingley wears a blue coat in P&P (ch. 3) and Lydia Bennet wants Wickham to ‘be married in his blue coat’ (ch. 51). See also ‘Love and Friendship’, note to p. 87.

  something in the appearance … account for it: as in the contrast of Jezalinda and Rebecca (p. 4), JA may be parodying a stock debate between the charms of the mind and those of the body—in Sir Charles Grandison, Harriet is said to be attracted primarily to Sir Charles’s intellect rather than to his appearance (ii, letter 9). Cf. ‘The three Sisters’, in which Georgiana says of Mr Watts: ‘He is rather plain to be sure, but then what is Beauty in a Man’ (p. 55).

  a young Leveret, a brace of Partridges, a leash of Pheasants: the list ascends in numerical order. A leveret is ‘A young hare, strictly one in its first year’; a ‘brace’ is a pair; a ‘leash’ is a set of three (see OED). Cf. the extravagant consumption of food in ‘Lesley-Castle’ (especially pp. 103–4).

  double engagement: a very serious breach of propriety; in Sir Charles Grandison, the hero narrowly avoids becoming engaged to two women, Clementina della Porretta and Harriet Byron, at the same time.

  reflection of her past folly … guilty of a greater: possibly an echo of the scene in which Richardson’s Pamela—imprisoned, despondent, and injured—contemplates suicide by drowning herself in a pond (Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded, i, ‘THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY … Days of my Distress’). Perhaps also an echo of Olivia’s song in The Vicar of Wakefield. ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly’, the song concludes, the only solution is death (ii, ch. 5).

  7 deep stream … Portland Place: neither pleasure grounds nor a stream adorned the town-houses of Portland Place.

  sweet lines, as pathetic as beautifull: cf. The Loiterer, no. 59: ‘When an author describes a scene which he wishes to be affecting, let him boldly pronounce it so himself’ (p. 9).

  8 seven days … expired, together with the lovely Charlotte: for other instances of JA’s syllepsis, or zeugma, whereby one verb governs two different, incongruous objects (here, ‘days’ and ‘Charlotte’), see e.g. ‘Jack & Alice’: ‘cruel Charles to wound the hearts & legs of all the fair’ (p. 18). She probably learned the technique from Pope’s Rape of the Lock, in which Queen Anne is famously said to ‘take’ both ‘Counsel’ and ‘Tea’ (canto 3, l. 8).

  smelling Bottle … dagger: a parody of the legendary choice between dagger and bowl. Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II, was said to hav
e given her rival, ‘Fair Rosamund’, the choice of killing herself by drinking poison from a bowl or of being stabbed. The tale is re-told in Joseph Addison’s Rosamond an Opera (1707). Smelling bottles held perfume or smelling salts, used as a restorative in cases of fainting.

  When Corydon … very fess: like Damon, Corydon is a stock name for a pastoral singer–swain; there is a shepherd with this name in Theocritus’ Idylls and in Virgil’s Eclogues. Cf. another Corydon in ‘The Mystery’, who appears in ‘A Garden’ and says only ‘But Hush! I am interrupted’ (the opening line of the play). ‘Bess’ is, contrastingly, an archetypally English rustic name, while ‘fess’ narrows the linguistic field still further; it is a dialect word from the south and south-west of England, meaning ‘Lively, active, strong; gay “smart”, clever’ (English Dialect Dictionary, ed. Joseph Wright (1898–1905), ii, 338).

  Stage Waggon: ‘one of the wagons belonging to an organized system of conveyance for heavy goods and passengers by road’ (OED): the cheapest, slowest, and most uncomfortable type of public transport.

  9 delicate frame of her mind … press her on the subject: Elfrida’s coy reluctance ever to name the day takes to its logical conclusion a comparable wish in countless heroines of 18th-century fiction, including Richardson’s Pamela. Cf. JA’s letter to Cassandra of 5 Sept. 1796, where she jokes about lovers being kept ‘apart for five Volumes’ (Letters, 9).

  spluttered: to splutter is to speak hastily and indistinctly, quite possibly while spitting; Johnson considers ‘splutter’ a ‘low word’ (Dictionary).

  fainting fits … fell into another: cf. ‘Love and Friendship’: ‘For an Hour & a Quarter did we continue in this unfortunate Situation—Sophia fainting every moment & I running Mad as often’ (p. 87). Sir Hargrave Pollexfen declares in the Austen family’s dramatic skit ‘Sir Charles Grandison’ (after 1799): ‘I wish Women were not quite so delicate, with all their faints and fits!’ (act 2, scene 1).

  bold as brass … soft as cotton: ‘bold as brass’ is a proverbial simile; ‘soft as cotton’ appears to be JA’s invention.

  Jack & Alice

  10 Francis William Austen … Perseverance: this dedication must have been written between Dec. 1789 and Nov. 1791, when JA’s brother Francis (1774–1865) served as midshipman on the Perseverance in the East Indies (these dates cannot, however, assist us in establishing precisely when the tale itself was written; see Introduction, Chronology of the Teenage Writings, and ‘Mr Harley’, note to p. 33). ‘Esqr’ (Esquire) is a courtesy title for gentlemen rather than teenagers, though Francis had by this stage left home; cf. the dedication of ‘Sir William Mountague’ to Charles Austen (p. 34). JA also dedicated ‘Mr Harley’ to Francis. In MP, Fanny Price’s brother William is a midshipman, defined by William Falconer in An Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1769) as ‘a sort of naval cadet, appointed by the captain of a ship of war, to second the orders of the superior officers, and assist in the necessary business of the vessel, either aboard or ashore’.

  Mr Johnson: in ‘Jane Austen and the Stuarts’, Brigid Brophy suggests an allusion to the Revd Augustus Johnson, who in 1791 became rector of Hamstall-Ridware, Staffordshire, a living on which the Austen family had its eye (in B. C. Southam (ed.), Critical Essays on Jane Austen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 21–38, at 23). However, the later reference in this chapter to ‘Johnson Court’ suggests that JA may (also) be thinking of Samuel Johnson, who once lived at Johnson or Johnson’s Court. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson was published on 16 May 1791; in it, Boswell recalled his own sensations on learning that Johnson had moved elsewhere: ‘I felt a foolish regret that he had left a court which bore his name’. Life of Johnson, ii, 15 (15 Mar. 1776).

  Masquerade: a masked ball, sometimes involving elaborate or fantastical disguises and hence associated with excess and disorder. Masquerades in 18th-century novels often end badly for the central characters (as in Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones (1749), bk 13, ch. 7). Sir Charles Grandison is against masquerades (i, letter 27); in the Austen family’s ‘Sir Charles Grandison’, Harriet Byron calls them ‘odious’ (act 3, scene 1). Frances Burney’s Evelina, or A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, 3 vols. (1778) and Cecilia include masquerade scenes; the name ‘Cecilia’ appears later in this chapter and nowhere else in JA’s works.

  55th year: in ‘Love and Friendship’ (p. 69), Laura is said to be ‘this Day 55’.

  tickets: Mr Johnson plans to invite just four families to a private party—for which printed tickets, of the kind typically issued for a large public ball, would be comically inappropriate (‘tickets’ here may mean calling cards with handwritten invitations). In Burney’s Cecilia, the joke works in the other direction as Captain Aresby nonchalantly informs the heroine that ‘our select masquerade at the Pantheon … shall have but 500 tickets’ (bk 1, ch. 8).

  10 Pammydiddle: a nonsense compound: ‘pam’ is a card game in which the knave of clubs is the highest trump (see The Rape of the Lock: ‘The Rebel-Knave, that dares his Prince engage, | Proves the just Victim of his Royal Rage. | Ev’n mighty Pam that Kings and Queens o’erthrew’, canto 3, ll. 59–61); ‘diddle’ means to cheat. There may also be an echo of Richardson’s heroine, Pamela.

  rather tall: JA refers to herself as ‘a tall woman’ on 25 Jan. 1801 (Letters, 81); cf. Memoir: ‘her figure was rather tall’ (70). The Lesley sisters are said to be ‘two great, tall, out of the way, over-grown, Girls, just of a proper size to inhabit a Castle almost as Large in comparison as themselves’ (p. 107).

  passionate: ‘Easily moved to anger’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary). In the supporting quotation for this definition, ‘passionate’ is paired with ‘haughty’, suggesting the implications of wealth, status, and arrogance that often accompany tall male characters in 18th-century fiction. In Harcourt: A Sentimental Novel, 2 vols. (1780), a work attributed on the title page to Burney (but not in fact hers), the ‘absolutely irresistible’ hero, Edmond, is ‘tall’ and ‘very thin’. As is the case with Charles Adams, no-one ‘views his approach without transport, or his departure without regret’ (i, 12–13).

  Charles Adams: this irresistibly beautiful, dazzling character may be named with reference to Sir Charles Grandison, another impossibly perfect man; the youngest Austen brother was also called Charles—a Stuart name (see ‘The History of England’ for JA’s overt, outrageous Stuart bias).

  none but Eagles … Face: eagles are traditionally believed to be able to look at the sun; later in this chapter, Charles wears a ‘Mask representing the Sun’ (p. 11).

  Sukey: a pet-form of Susan (itself a diminutive of Susannah), as in P. Gibbes’s The Niece; or, The History of Sukey Thornby. A Novel, 3 vols. (1788). According to the OED, from at least 1823 ‘sukey’ was a child’s or slang name for a tea-kettle; given this tale’s jokes about over-heating it may well have been current before then.

  Jointure: property settled on a woman at marriage, to be used when her husband has died. Johnson’s Dictionary suggests the welcome, indeed unique, independence afforded by this provision: ‘Estate settled on a wife to be enjoyed after her husband’s decease’. Mrs Jennings in S&S shows how enjoyable such wealth might be.

  11 Tho’ Benevolent … Entertaining: the syntax here imitates Johnsonian symmetry and parallelism; the passage comically lacks the expected contrasts between diametrically opposing qualities.

  family of Love: originally the name of a 16th-century religious sect; by the 18th century, a phrase commonly deployed in novels and without religious implication. See e.g. Tom Jones, bk 14, ch. 6; Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple (1753), bk 6, ch. 7; Sir Charles Grandison, iii, letter 28; Charlotte Lennox, Euphemia, 4 vols. (1790), iv, 42. In Edward. A Novel, 2 vols. (1774), James Wharton declares: ‘there is not so enchanting a society as that of a well-regulated family, a family of love’ (ii, 82). But the phrase had a less reputable connotation that may also have been in JA’s mind; in Classical Dictionary, ‘FAMILY OF LOVE’ is said to mean ‘lewd women’. />
  the Bottle & the Dice: drinking and gambling, here referred to metonymically; cf. Mr Harrel’s fatal attraction to both in Cecilia (bk 5, ch. 12).

  Drawing Room: a room designed for the reception and entertainment of guests, but typically more intimate and less formal than other, more public rooms. See ‘Edgar & Emma’, note to p. 26.

  Sultana: the wife, concubine, mistress, or female relative of a sultan; the Turkish dress of a sultana was a popular choice for women at masquerades.

  female Masks: as in Tom Jones (bk 13, ch. 7), ‘masks’ here are, metonymically, the masqueraders themselves.

  Mask representing the Sun: a parodic reference to Grandison, whose face is ‘overspread with a manly sunniness’ (i, letter 36). This is the only citation given in the OED to support a now obsolete sense of ‘sunniness’—‘Sunburn, tan’; women sometimes wore masks to prevent burning, tanning, and freckles. Mythological characters such as Apollo and Flora were popular at masquerades; cf. Cecilia, bk 2, ch. 3.

  plain green Coat: dark green was a fashionable choice for men’s coats. In The History of Sir William Harrington. Written some years since, and revised and corrected by the late Mr Richardson, 4 vols. (1771), the ladies are warned to beware an injured stranger lying in the next room: ‘he is such a handsome man, I am almost afraid for you’. This ‘fine figure’ is dressed in a green coat. Large draughts of strong drink and cordials feature in this episode, as do implausible preparations for emergency surgery (cf. Lady Williams, p. 18). The History of Sir William Harrington also features a housekeeper called ‘Knightly’ (i, 196–8), anticipating the hero’s name in E.