by Jane Austen
Gooseberry Wine: another simple, domestic, old-fashioned wine, inappropriate for smart formal gatherings. JA may have in mind The Vicar of Wakefield, in which the vicar proudly mentions ‘our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation’ (vol. 1, ch. 1).
The Mystery
49 Revd George Austen: JA’s father, George Austen (1731–1805), rector of Steventon; this is the only one of the teenage writings dedicated to him. It may have been composed as an afterpiece at the family’s ‘private Theatrical exhibition’ in 1788. James Austen’s prologue to the main play performed at that exhibition survives (The Complete Poems of James Austen: Jane Austen’s Eldest Brother, ed. David Selwyn (Chawton: Jane Austen Society, 2003), 26–7), but the name of the drama itself and the date of its performance are unknown.
Spangle: ‘Any thing sparkling and shining’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary); a bright metallic fragment usually attached to clothing to create a glittering effect. Popular with rich and fashionable men, it was further associated with the stage, trickery, and jokes. The name may echo that of the theatre critic Dangle in Sheridan’s The Critic, a comedy partly based on George Villiers’ celebrated satirical drama, The Rehearsal (1672) (see note to p. 50); both works contain famous whispering scenes. There is a Count Spangle, ‘prodigiously well-bred … a most egregious coxcomb’, in The Legacy, or, The Fortune-Hunter, one of the plays included in The Comic Theatre. Being a Free Translation of All the Best French comedies, 5 vols. (1762), iii, 35.
Humbug: a hoax, jesting trick, imposture, or fraud (OED); cf. Crankhumdunberry in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 3.
Corydon: a stock name for a pastoral singer-swain, it also appears in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ (p. 8).
Daphne: the daughter of a river god, loved by Apollo, the mythological Daphne escaped his affections only to be changed into a laurel tree; like Corydon, her name was often used in pastoral verse.
50 at work: sewing or mending items for the family or others; needlework and embroidery were considered to be genteel female pastimes. There are references to this kind of ‘work’ in JA’s correspondence (see e.g. Letters, 173).
whispers: cf. George Villiers’ The Rehearsal, in which Bayes’s play-within-a-play ‘instead of beginning with a Scene that discovers something of the Plot’ reveals nothing other than secrets uttered in ‘a whisper’, concluding with the stage direction ‘Exeunt Whispering’ (act 2, scene 1). Whispering also features in Sheridan’s The Critic (act 1, scene 1).
51 reclined in an elegant Attitude: cf. Caroline Simpson, who in ‘Jack & Alice’ adopts a ‘studied attitude on a couch’ (p. 11). Indolence was a fashionable affectation in the 1780s; for another caricature of the requisite ‘lounging posture’, see the description of Mr Meadows in Cecilia (bk 4, ch. 6).
The three Sisters
52 Edward Austen Esqre: JA’s third brother, Edward (1767–1852), formally adopted by Thomas and Catherine Knight in 1783. On 1 Mar. 1791 he became engaged to Elizabeth Bridges; that same year, her sisters Fanny and Sophia also announced their engagements. The story may have been written as a wedding present to Edward and Elizabeth, who married on 27 Dec. 1791.
52 quite an old Man, about two & thirty: cf. the joke about age in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ (and note to p. 5). Colonel Brandon, whom Marianne considers ‘exceedingly ancient’, is 35 (S&S, ch. 8).
Settlements … very healthy: property or money legally settled by pre-nuptial contract on the wife and her children (if any); see ‘Jointure’ in ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 10. As Mary realizes, the longer her husband lives, the less will remain for her; she can in any case make no use of the settlement until after his death.
stingy: ‘A low cant word’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary); as such, it is involved in the definitions of several words in successive editions of Grose’s Classical Dictionary, but has no entry of its own. The word appears again in Letter the fifth of ‘Collection of Letters’ (p. 144).
53 blue spotted with silver … plain Chocolate: Mary’s preferences are extravagant, especially by comparison with Mr Watts’s conventional choice of ‘plain Chocolate’, but they are not beyond the realms of possibility. The Weekly Entertainer; or Agreeable and Instructive Repository (Sherborne, 1792) reports as follows on the Hon. Mrs Lockhart’s ‘town coach’: ‘the ground of the body mazarine blue, highly varnished, and ornamented with silver; the lining pale blue, and trimmed with fancy lace; carriage crane-necked, elegantly constructed, and painted a light Chinese blue, relieved with dark blue and white. In appearance it is elegant without being gaudy; and the whole is finished in a manner that does credit to the taste and execution of the builder’ (xxi, 82–3).
as low as his old one: high carriages were more fashionable and provided a better view, but they were less stable and less practical than the low models favoured by Mr Watts. The Loiterer, no. 32, includes a young woman who ‘admired high Phaetons … to distraction’ (13).
to chaprone: to accompany a young unmarried lady in public, as guide and protector. A chaperone was typically a married or elderly woman. The OED cites S&S as offering the earliest known example of the verb ‘to chaperon’ (ch. 20); cf. ‘chaperon’ in P&P, ch. 39.
Winter Balls: either private parties or public dances and assemblies, such as masquerades (see note to p. 10).
Mary Stanhope: on this surname see ‘Sir William Mountague’, note to p. 35. The character of Mary Stanhope may owe something to Nanny Johnson in Sarah Fielding’s Adventures of David Simple. Like Mary, Nanny wants ‘fine Jewels’ and ‘an Equipage’, but cannot abide her old, wealthy suitor. Nor can she endure the possible sight of ‘my Sister … in her Coach and Six, while I take up with a Hack, or at best with a Coach and Pair. Oh! I can never bear that Thought, that is certain; my Heart is ready to burst. Sure never Woman’s Misfortune equalled mine’ (bk 1, ch. 5).
54 Law: a colloquial euphemism for ‘Lord’ (cf. Mrs Jennings’s use of it in S&S, ch. 30).
drinks Tea: tea was drunk in the late afternoon or early evening, several hours after dinner, and followed in due course by a light supper. Fashionable society favoured late dining hours, hence also later teas and night-time suppers. Life at Steventon did not follow such patterns, as JA wrote to Cassandra (18–19 Dec. 1798): ‘We dine now at half after Three … We drink tea at half after six’ (Letters, 28). In later years (9 Dec. 1808), however, writing from Southampton, she notes that ‘we never dine now till five’ (Letters, 164).
they should fight him: Mary hopes for a duel, which is not only unwarranted by the immediate situation but was a practice that by this period was becoming obsolete. Cf. ‘Sir William Mountague’, note to p. 35; S&S, ch. 23; P&P, ch. 48.
Miss XXX: a comic reference to the convention in 18th-century novels of abbreviating or withholding the names of characters as if they were real people; cf. ‘M.’ and ‘F.’ in ‘Henry & Eliza’; see also ‘Love and Friendship’, note to p. 72.
56 Three thousand a year: a substantial rather than a vast income, as Georgiana notes; it may even be a threshold figure of sorts, at least in fiction of the period. Two or three thousand a year is said to be ‘a neat income’ in Burney’s Cecilia (bk 9, ch. 4). There is a warning Mary would do well to heed in Agnes Maria Bennett’s Anna: or Memoirs of a Welch Heiress—not to consider ‘the riches of a man with three thousand pounds a year’ as ‘endless’ (i, 63).
57 your most obedient: short for ‘most obedient servant’.
pin money: ‘A (usually annual) sum allotted to a woman for clothing and other personal expenses; esp. such an allowance provided for a wife’s private expenditure’ (OED).
58 Saddle horse: a horse used for riding, as distinct from the four bay horses needed to draw the carriage.
suit of fine lace: an expensive matching gown and petticoat; lace was a highly sought-after, luxury item. Samuel Johnson compared it with ancient Greek: ‘every man gets as much of it as he can’ (Life of Johnson, ii, 341 [1780]).
valuable Jewels … out of number: in a deleted passage (see Te
xtual Notes, p. 225), Mary asks for still more fantastical jewels, alluding to those of the Princess Badroulbadour from ‘The Story of Aladdin’ in The Arabian Nights (trans. c.1706–21) and including ‘Turkey stones’ (turquoises) and ‘Bugles’ (tube-shaped glass beads).
Greenhouse: ‘A house in which tender plants are sheltered from the weather’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary). These constructions, another status symbol, were sometimes elaborate and costly. See also Mrs Peterson’s greenhouse in ‘Kitty, or the Bower’ (and S&S, ch. 33).
58 every Winter in Bath, every Spring in Town: Mary wants to spend the fashionable winter season in the spa resort of Bath and spring in London (as well as the rest of the year away from home).
some Tour: a prolonged excursion in the British Isles or abroad, typically in pursuit of picturesque scenery; JA is perhaps recalling William Gilpin’s accounts of his various ‘tours’ to the Wye and south Wales (1782), the Lake District (1789), and the Scottish highlands (1789). JA incongruously lists Gilpin among the ‘first of Men’ in ‘The History of England’ (‘Edward the 6th’) and alludes to his writings elsewhere in the teenage writings and published novels. Henry Austen remembered that his sister ‘was a warm and judicious admirer of landscape, both in nature and on canvass. At a very early age, she was enamored of Gilpin on the Picturesque’ (Memoir, 140–1). See also ‘Love and Friendship’, note to p. 70.
Watering Place: a spa town or seaside resort.
a Theatre to act Plays in: in the 1770s, it became fashionable for private theatres to be built in large country houses; the heroine of Frances Brooke’s The Excursion, 2 vols. (1777) is promised such a venue in which to write and perform tragedies (ii, 257). From Dec. 1782 onwards, the Austen family used their barn or the rectory dining room for their performances. Cf. the makeshift arrangements for theatricals in MP, ch. 13.
Which is the Man: along with David Garrick’s Bon Ton; or, High Life above Stairs. A Comedy (1775), Hannah Cowley’s Which is the Man? A Comedy ([1783]) was considered for the Austens’ Christmas theatricals in 1787; like Mary, Eliza de Feuillide seems to have fancied herself in the role of the heroine. According to James’s additional verses for that year, the play eventually chosen (with Eliza in the heroine’s role) was The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret! (see ‘Henry & Eliza’, notes to pp. 27 and 30).
Lady Bell Bloomer: a lively, fashionable widow who is seeking to remarry, Lady Bell is pursued by the rakish Lord Sparkle. She is as demanding a character as Mary.
59 silver Border: probably silver plating; cf. the town coach ‘ornamented with silver’ (see note to p. 53).
Writings: these are the settlements to which reference has earlier been made in this story.
Special Licence … Banns: those wishing to marry in a private house or chapel had to pay for a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury; see ‘Henry & Eliza’, note to p. 29
common Licence: a licence granted by the bishop, permitting couples to avoid the calling of banns from the church pulpit; see ‘Henry & Eliza’, note top. 29.
60 my appearance: Mary’s first entrance into the public arena as Mrs Watts (see note to p. 61).
provision: the sum of money left by Mary’s father to his daughter, therefore presumably also to her sisters; perhaps each of them has, like their mother, £500 per annum.
Jemima: an Old Testament name (cf. Rebecca and Jezalinda in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, Chapter the Second), it gained in popularity in the early 19th century.
61 Entrée: the action or manner of making a public entrance into a room (cf. Letters, 24, where JA jokes about her mother’s ‘entrée into the dressing-room’).
62 Vixen: ‘The name of a she-fox; otherwise applied to a woman whose nature and condition is thereby compared to a she-fox’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary). In Classical Dictionary, ‘vixen’ is synonymous with ‘hell cat’.
Blackguard: ‘A cant word among the vulgar; by which is implied a dirty fellow; of the meanest kind’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary). In Classical Dictionary, ‘black guard’ is ‘A shabby dirty fellow, a term said to be derived from a number of dirty tattered and roguish boys, who attended at the horse guards and parade in St. James’s park, to black the shoes and boots of the soldiers, or to do any other dirty offices’.
dressed: wearing evening dress for dinner.
[Detached peices]
To Miss Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen
63 Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen: JA’s niece Anna (1793–1872), first daughter of James Austen, born on 15 Apr. 1793 and therefore not yet seven weeks old when this dedication was written. What JA refers to in the dedication as ‘Miscellanious Morsels’ might have been written some time before 2 June 1793; in the list of contents they are called ‘Detached peices’, but the group has no title in the text itself (cf. the ‘Scraps’ dedicated to Fanny Catherine Austen in Volume the Second). Anna grew up to become a writer of fiction and tried to finish Sanditon, left incomplete at JA’s death.
trusting that you will in time be older: this sounds like a joke, but given infant mortality rates there was necessarily an element of trust in assuming a child would grow to maturity.
the care of your excellent Parent: revised from ‘Parents’, reflecting the fact that Anna’s mother, Anne, died in May 1795, when her daughter was only two years old (see Textual Notes, p. 225). Anna was sent to be looked after and comforted by her aunts JA and Cassandra at Steventon (Family Record, 90–1).
these Treatises for your Benefit: a sly reference to the lucrative trade in sententious pedagogical works for teenage girls: e.g. James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women (1766), John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (1774), and two works owned by JA herself, Ann Murry’s Memoria: or, The Young Ladies Instructor (1780) and Thomas Percival’s A Father’s Instructions to his Children (1775). Mrs Peterson in ‘Kitty, or the Bower’ is keen on this kind of writing, as is Mr Collins in P&P (ch. 14).
A fragment—written to inculcate the practise of Virtue
63 A fragment … Virtue: the shortest of all the teenage writings, the entirety of this fragment was later deleted (see Textual Notes, p. 225). It contains hints of emerging comedy: ‘to study their wants, and to leave them unsupplied’ could mean seeking out the unfortunate precisely in order to refuse to help them; the vulgar image of ‘those that perspire away their Evenings in crouded assemblies’ fails to present the anticipated contrast of the leisured wealthy classes with the poor, who ‘sweat under the fatigue of their daily Labour’ (cf. the collapse of upper- into lower-class characters in ‘Edgar & Emma’ and ‘The Visit’). These aspects of the fragment suggest that it may have been the beginning of a parodic treatise or conduct book of the sort mentioned in the dedication to Anna.
A beautiful description of the different effects of Sensibility on different Minds
A beautiful description: striking and attractive ‘descriptions’ of scenes involving extreme states of being, emotional and physical, were meant to cultivate the sensibility and sympathy of those who read or heard them; they are often mentioned in 18th-century fiction and pedagogical texts for young people. See e.g. Major Piper; or The Adventures of a Musical Drone. A Novel, 2 vols. (1794): ‘She listened with attention to my story, the particulars of which I related to her, and attempted to raise her sensibility by an affecting description of all my unmerited sufferings. I thought she began to sympathize with me in my affliction’ (ii, 22).
Sensibility: a key term in 18th-century philosophy, aesthetics, and literature, referring (broadly speaking) to the mind and body’s susceptibility to beauty and pathos. A touchstone throughout the teenage writings.
Melissa’s: a highly unusual name in the 18th century, Melissa also appears in Johnson’s Adventurer, no. 34 (3 Mar. 1753).
book muslin: ‘A fine kind of muslin owing its name to the book-like manner in which it is folded when sold in one piece’ (OED).
chambray gauze shift: an undergarment made of cambric, a fine white linen imported from France. JA wrote a poem (1808) in p
raise of cambric handkerchiefs.
french net nightcap: also known as a ‘dormeuse’, this type of large, elaborate, indoor cap was (despite its name) popular daywear in the second half of the 18th century. It featured a ribbon-trimmed crown that fitted over the head, with flaps called ‘wings’ at each side.
64 hashing up … old Duck: ‘hashing’ means shredding, reheating and serving with egg or a sauce; a cheap way of using up leftovers.
toasting some cheese: another cheap rather than refined meal.
Curry: introduced to England from India, this spicy dish is ill suited to the delicate stomach of an invalid. JA reverses a joke made in ‘The Visit’ (act 2, scene 2), in which a drink fit for an invalid is served to a young, healthy woman (see note to p. 47).
cordials: cordial is ‘A medicine that increases the force of the heart, or quickens the circulation’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary).
The generous Curate
The generous Curate: this portrait may derive, in part, from that of Parson Abraham Adams in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews; he too is blessed and burdened with six children, strapped for cash, but cheerful and uncomplaining.
a moral Tale: a popular form of didactic fiction for children; see e.g. Moral and Instructive Tales for the Improvement of Young Ladies: Calculated to Amuse the Mind, and Form the Heart to Virtue ( [1786]); Maria Edgeworth, Moral Tales for Young People (1801).
Clergyman: not the curate of the title (see ‘The Visit’, note to p. 44), but a rector with his own parish, responsible for executing or overseeing all official duties including those of his curate.
living … about two hundred pound: the clergyman’s income, or ‘living’, derived from tithes paid by residents of his parish and from the rent paid to him by those who farmed parish land. He would also live in a rent-free house. £200 is not a large annual salary; JA’s father’s two livings (Steventon and Deane) brought in a total of £210 and had to be supplemented by tutoring and by income from one of his cousin’s farms. JA’s brother, the Revd James Austen, and his wife struggled to make ends meet on a yearly income of £300.