by Jane Austen
25 confidante: JA puns on the name given by the English designer George Hepplewhite (d. 1786) to a type of settee (‘confidante’, OED) and ‘A person trusted with private affairs, commonly with affairs of love’ (‘confidant’, Johnson’s Dictionary). John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters, 2nd edn (1774), warns against ‘making confidants of your servants’, as it would ‘spoil them and debase yourselves’ (71–2). Thomas the footman is, in any case, of the wrong gender and rank to be a confidante for Emma; cf. gender confusion in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ and ‘The History of England’ (in which Lambert Simnel is imagined as the widow of Richard III). JA also changes the gender when quoting or alluding to other authors (see ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 15, and her allusion to Cowper’s Tironcinium: or, a Review of Schools (1785) in MP, ch. 45).
26 Parlour … social Manner: the parlour in a private house was ‘a sitting room; esp. the main family living room, or the room reserved for entertaining guests’ (OED); Johnson’s Dictionary describes it as ‘elegantly furnished for reception or entertainment’. The more fashionable option for entertaining guests, by the 1780s, was a ‘drawing room’. In Indiana Brooks’s novel Eliza Beaumont and Harriet Osborne: or, The Child of Doubt, 2 vols. (1789), Eliza says that her house has ‘only seven apartments … two best bedrooms, an eating parlour, and drawing room’ (ii, 101); in another novel published that year, Lady Louisa refers similarly to ‘an eating-parlour’, as distinct from ‘a drawing room’ on the same floor (Richard Cumberland, Arundel, 2 vols. (1789), ii, 220). The circular seating arrangement described in ‘Edgar & Emma’ was also yielding to a more informal layout, as Humphry Repton observed in 1803: ‘formerly the best room in the house was opened only a few days in the year, where the guests sat in a formal circle, but now the largest and best room in a gentleman’s house is that most frequented and inhabited … in winter, by the help of two fireplaces, the restraint and formality of the circle is done away’ (Observations on … Landscape Gardening, 185). The Austen rectory at Steventon had both a small parlour and a common parlour in which the family gathered.
Eton: Eton College near Windsor, the most prestigious public school for boys; in MP, the Bertram sons are sent there.
Winchester: Winchester College in Winchester, the cathedral city and county town of Hampshire, where JA died and is buried. As an adult, her primary association with Winchester College, another pre-eminent public school, was through her nephews: Edward Austen Knight’s sons and James Edward, son of James Austen and JA’s first biographer, were educated there.
Queen’s Square: Queen Square, Bloomsbury, a fashionable address in London and home to a girls’ school known as the ‘Ladies Eton’, at which Kitty is perhaps a pupil. The school was ‘run by the Misses Stevenson exclusively for the daughters of the nobility and the gentry’ and was attended by Elizabeth Bridges, who went on to marry JA’s brother Edward (Family Record, 70).
convent at Brussells: the Willmots must be a Catholic family who have sent their daughters to be educated at a Belgian convent.
college: in view of Edgar’s likely age, JA is probably referring to a school such as Eton or Winchester College, rather than to one of the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge.
at Nurse: that is, with a wet nurse or foster-mother, who is breast-feeding the baby and caring for it alongside her own offspring. The Austen children, like others of their class, were sent out to nurse; infants might not return home to their parents until they were two years old. The practice was falling out of favour in JA’s lifetime.
Henry & Eliza
27 Henry and Eliza: JA’s title combines the names of her fourth brother Henry (1771–1850) and her paternal cousin Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide, née Hancock (1761–1813). In 1781, at the age of 19, Eliza had married a French soldier; he was guillotined in Paris in 1794. In Dec. 1797 she married Henry. A decade earlier, in Dec. 1787, they were flirting and acting together in family performances of Susanna Centlivre’s popular comedy The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret! (1714). The play sees the hero Don Felix (played by Henry) and the beautiful Violante (played by Eliza) contend with parental opposition, impish servants, and various misfortunes and misunderstandings before they are finally united for ever. ‘Henry & Eliza’ oddly predicts Eliza de Feuillide’s widowhood and removal from France to England.
Miss Cooper: JA’s cousin on the maternal side, Jane Cooper (1771–98), an early, close friend and regular participant in Austen family theatricals; also the dedicatee of ‘Collection of Letters’. In spring 1783 she went to Oxford with JA and Cassandra Austen to be taught by a Mrs Cawley. Later that year, Mrs Cawley took the girls to Southampton, where JA and Cassandra succumbed to a putrid fever. Mrs Austen and her sister Mrs Cooper travelled to Southampton to take the girls home. Subsequently, Mrs Cooper caught the infection and died in Oct. 1783.
rewarding the industry … approbation: the standard reward for such labour would have been food and beer, rather than mere smiles. Haymakers were in high demand during the harvest and could expect reasonable salaries as well as board and lodging.
cudgel: ‘A short thick stick used as a weapon; a club’ (OED). To punish your workers in this way is comically disproportionate; but it may briefly register the reality that, from the 1750s onwards, farm labourers across the country were being offered less favourable and shorter-term contracts, losing their common land, and facing an overall deterioration in their circumstances. Their protests against such hardship culminated in the Captain Swing riots of 1830.
27 Haycock: ‘A conical heap of hay in the field’ (OED).
little Girl … 3 months old: Eliza thus appears to be a foundling. Her mysterious origins may allude to those of JA’s cousin Eliza, widely believed to be the illegitimate child of her godfather Warren Hastings, later the first Governor-General of Bengal. ‘Haycock’ is tantalizingly close to Eliza’s maiden name, Hancock. In Jan. 1788 another comedy was performed at Steventon, John Fletcher’s The Chances (c.1617): one early scene features an abandoned baby (see also note to p. 31).
stealing a bank-note … inhuman Benefactors: this incident is echoed in ‘Love and Friendship’, a work dedicated to Eliza de Feuillide; Laura and Sophia repeatedly pilfer banknotes ‘of considerable amount’ from Macdonald (p. 85). Again, when they are caught the consequence is merely expulsion, although Macdonald (like Eliza’s parents) is accused of being ‘inhuman’ (p. 91). Since stealing much smaller amounts of money was a capital offence, the response in both cases is relatively lenient, although expulsion from home could also be life-threatening.
28 M.: supposedly an abbreviation for the name of a real market town; JA is spoofing the convention in novels of only partly revealing names, places, and dates, as if shielding facts and protecting real identities. Cf. ‘the Dutchess of F.’ in this ‘novel’, and ‘Miss XXX’ in ‘The three Sisters’. See also ‘Love and Friendship’, note to p. 72.
the red Lion: a common name for an inn or alehouse; the emblem would usually appear on the sign.
Humble Companion: usually a position for destitute gentlewomen, hired in exchange for room, board, and clothes to entertain and accompany another woman, such as a wealthy relative. The situation was rich in opportunities to humiliate the female dependent, as Jane Collier pointed out: ‘The servant, indeed, differs in this; she receives wages, and the humble companion receives none: the servant is most part of the day out of your sight; the humble companion is always ready at hand to receive every cross word that rises in your mind: the servants can be teazed only by yourself, your dogs, your cats, your parrots, your children; the humble companion, besides being the sport of all these, must, if you manage rightly, bear the insults of all the servants themselves’. An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting; With Proper Rules for the Exercise of that Pleasant Art (1753), 42–3. Mary Wynne endures a position as humble companion to Lady Halifax in ‘Kitty, or the Bower’.
Willson: revised from ‘Jones’, perhaps because a Mrs Jones appears in ‘Jack & Alice’ (see Te
xtual Notes, p. 222).
freindship for Mrs Wilson … reached the same Evening: a duchess would not be expected to befriend an innkeeper, let alone travel across the country to meet a future employee at the pub.
29 a private union: the Church allowed couples planning to marry to avoid the otherwise compulsory delay and publicity of calling banns on three successive Sundays by providing, for a fee, a common marriage licence. Those who wanted to marry in a private house or chapel had to pay a higher fee for a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury; because of the expense, such an arrangement was socially prestigious. There is another ‘private’ marriage in ‘Sir William Mountague’.
dutchess’s chaplain: without a licence from the bishop, a chaplain could not authorize a private marriage; this union is therefore invalid. The chaplain, having acted illegally, could expect to be imprisoned if caught.
the Continent: the mainland of continental Europe; here referring specifically to France.
18,000£ a year: revised upwards from £12,000 (see Textual Notes, p. 223) and therefore exceeding the annual income of the wealthiest character in JA’s novels, Mr Rushworth of MP; in other words, this is an inordinate expenditure.
rather less than the twentieth part: what Eliza euphemistically terms a ‘derangement in their affairs’ means that the Cecil estate is generating less than £600 per annum.
30 man of War of 55 Guns: the odd number of guns is impossible; warships always had an even number. A fourth-rate ship carried between 50 and 60 guns and over 295 officers and crew; the man-of-war is therefore absurdly over-sized for a privately owned vessel. On the number 55, see also ‘Jack & Alice’ (p. 10) and ‘Love and Friendship’ (p. 69).
snug little Newgate: a private dungeon, named after the notorious London prison; ‘snug’ introduces the incongruous image of a cosy room. Newgate is also mentioned in ‘Love and Friendship’ (p. 79).
threw her Children after them: heroines in fiction sometimes escape captivity by ladders; see e.g. Sarah Fielding’s The History of Ophelia, 2 vols. (1760), ii, ch. 7. JA may again be alluding to a scene in Centlivre’s The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret! in which Violante’s friend Isabella jumps out of a window and is caught by a passing stranger who later marries her. Jane Cooper is likely to have played Isabella to Eliza de Feuillide’s Violante in Dec. 1787. See also ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 5.
gold Watch for herself: as an expensive, proverbially luxurious item, a gold watch purchased by someone in dire financial straits might indeed prove ‘fatal’. In Agnes Maria Bennett’s Juvenile Indiscretions. A Novel, 5 vols. (1786), Henry, recently facing starvation but now offered a share of his friend’s 6 guineas, imagines for himself (among other gold and silver possessions) ‘a very good gold watch, chain and seals’ (iii, 86).
31 walked 30 without stopping: a woman was not expected to walk anywhere unaccompanied, let alone for 30 miles; Elizabeth Bennet raises eyebrows in P&P when she sets out on foot, alone, to reach her sister Jane at Netherfield (ch. 8).
31 collation: ‘A light meal or repast: one consisting of light viands or delicacies (e.g. fruit, sweets, and wine), or that has needed little preparation’ (OED); ‘A repast; a treat less than a feast’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary).
Junkettings: a colloquial term for feasting and making merry; Johnson’s Dictionary defines ‘To junket’ as ‘To feast secretly; to make entertainments by stealth’, an activity which befits the other incongruous mysteries in this story.
receive some Charitable Gratuity: Eliza is cloaking a shabby truth in genteel euphemisms; she intends to beg for cash outside the inn.
our real Child: this turn of events parodies the endings of many 18th-century novels, including Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Evelina, in which a foundling, illegitimate child, or orphan is suddenly discovered to be of noble parentage, often thanks to a coincidental meeting. See ‘Love and Friendship’, pp. 81–2.
Polly: pet form of Mary Anne.
the wellfare of my Child: a likely reference to Fletcher’s The Chances, performed at Steventon in Jan. 1788: the heroine Constantia, fearing her brother’s response to the birth of her child, secretly hands it over to a stranger, enclosing gold and a jewel for its care. Lady Harcourt, in giving birth to a girl, fears her husband’s resentment at the child’s gender and leaves her under a haystack.
Mr Harley
33 Francis Will m Austen … Perseverance: this dedication to JA’s brother Francis, like that which prefaces ‘Jack & Alice’, must date from between Dec. 1789 and Nov. 1791, when he served on the Perseverance. Le Faye suggests that both ‘Jack & Alice’ and ‘Mr Harley’ were ‘probably written early in 1790’ (Family Record, 69), but the dates of the dedications cannot help to establish the dates of the tales themselves. See Introduction, Chronology of the Teenage Writings, and ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 10.
Mr Harley: the name of the quiveringly sensitive hero of Henry Mackenzie’s sentimental fiction The Man of Feeling (1771), itself perhaps a work of parody; the novel and its hero spawned a host of imitators. Noble characters called Harley feature in e.g. Adeline; or the Orphan. A Novel, 3 vols. (1790) and Agnes Maria Bennett’s Agnes de-Courci, A Domestic Tale, 4 vols. (1789).
father for the Church … Mother for the Sea: the choice of an acceptable profession for younger sons who had to earn a living was generally between the army, the navy, the Church, and the law; such a debate must have occurred more than once in the Austen household. As a naval chaplain, Mr Harley unites the two Austen family professions, the sea and the Church.
half a year: a very short period of naval service, perhaps designedly abrupt in the context of this ‘short, but interesting Tale’. Francis Austen spent almost three years, first as cadet and then as midshipman, on the Perseverance.
sat-off: that is, set off.
Stage Coach: a slightly faster, smaller, and better form of transport than the ‘Stage Waggon’ in which Roger and Rebecca travel in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ (note to p. 8), a stagecoach ran daily or on specified days between two places for the conveyance of passengers, parcels, etc. (OED). It was usually drawn by four horses and could accommodate up to six passengers, as it does here. Cf. ‘the Stage-Coach from Edinburgh to Sterling’ in the last two letters of ‘Love and Friendship’.
Hogsworth Green: this must be the country seat of Emma’s father, rather than of Emma herself, who at 17 is too young to own property. The name and farmyard setting recall ‘her Ladyship’s pigstye’ in ‘Jack & Alice’ (p. 15).
Sir William Mountague
34 Sir William Mountague: an echo of Romeo and Juliet (Montague is Romeo’s family name) and of Richardson’s Clarissa. Or, the History of a Young Lady, 7 vols. (1748–9), in which the villainous Lovelace is nephew and heir of Lord Mountague. Male characters called ‘Mountague’ also feature in e.g. Elizabeth Inchbald’s Emily Herbert. Or, Perfidy Punished. A Novel in a Series of Letters (1787), Bennett’s Agnes de-Courci, A Domestic Tale, and Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia, 4 vols. (1790).
unfinished performance: cf. the description of ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ as ‘this little production’ (p. 2); ‘performance’ (a word JA applied to no other teenage writing) may indicate a similar design for the work to be read aloud. It could further suggest that JA is completing the performance of a promise (albeit with an unfinished text), or the execution of a written work perhaps always intended for this dedicatee (cf. ‘Lesley-Castle’, note to p. 96). The story may have been composed in late 1788; one date mentioned in it, Monday 1 Sept., fell that year (Family Record, 66).
Charles John Austen Esqre: JA’s brother Charles (1779–1852), youngest of the Austen siblings and four years her junior; he was about 9 when this tale was written and left home in July 1791 for the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth. ‘Master’ rather than ‘Esqre’ (Esquire) would be the usual way of addressing a child, but as in the dedication of ‘Jack & Alice’ to ‘Francis William Austen Esqr’ JA is elaborately deferential.
inherited … from Sir Frede
ric Mountague: all are baronets, rather than knights, as the title is inherited. The pompous genealogical overload in this passage mimics the style of an entry in John Debrett’s A New Baronetage of England (1769), as does the description of the Elliot family in the opening paragraph of P.
Park well stocked with Deer: a status symbol, deer were kept to be hunted and as an elegant, picturesque feature of a gentleman’s estate; like groves, arbours, and summer houses, they were therefore also a standard feature of novelistic landscapes. In Sir Charles Grandison, Clementina ‘diverts herself often with feeding the deer, which gather about her, as soon as she enters the park’ (vii, letter 51).
34 Kilhoobery Park: despite the English location, the park has a spoof Irish name; cf. Crankhumdunberry in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 3.
equally in Love with them all: cf. ‘The three Sisters’, in which Mr Watts professes equal attachment to all the Stanhope girls, and Mr Collins in P&P, who is apparently indifferent as to which of the Bennet girls becomes his wife (chs. 19–22).
Lady Percival: an old English aristocratic name, Percival also features in JA’s ‘History of England’ and in the revised version of ‘Kitty, or the Bower’.
Vehemently pressed … first of September: cf. Elfrida’s reluctance to name the day in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ (p. 9); Lady Percival chooses the beginning of the partridge-shooting season, which ran from 1 Sept. to 1 Feb. (the day—Monday—for 1 Sept. is correct for 1788; see Family Record, 66). 1 Sept. is also mentioned in P&P (iii, ch. 9); see also Woodforde, The Diary of a Country Parson, 278.
a Shot: ‘One who shoots; an expert in shooting’; OED cites 1780 as the earliest instance of the word in this sense (cf. The Loiterer, no. 21).
35 Brudenell … Stanhope: both names also feature in ‘The three Sisters’; Stanhope appears in Frederic & Elfrida. A ‘Brudenell’ appears in The False Friends. A Novel. In a Series of Letters, 2 vols. (1785). Stanhope was the family name of Lord Chesterfield, and a popular choice in fiction (see e.g. The History of Miss Delia Stanhope. In a Series of Letters to Miss Dorinda Boothby, 2 vols. (1767)).