What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

by Daniel Pool

  The departed were always to be mourned for specifically prescribed periods of time, which, in practice, affected mostly the clothes the survivors were permitted to wear and whether they could have fun or not. Men had it easy; they needed only to wear black armbands, a custom adopted from the military in the early years of the century. Women, however, were supposed to dress all in black. “My dear Celia,” says Lady Catherine Chettam of Dorothy Casaubon after her husband’s death, “a widow must wear mourning at least a year.” This meant an all-black wardrobe (the so-called widow’s weeds), frequently of bombazine, a material especially favored because it did not gleam in light, and no jewelry or ornaments except for beads made of jet, a kind of coal. When she first sees her cousins Mary and Diana Rivers, Jane Eyre tells us they “both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazine” because their father had just died. A widow was expected to mourn her husband for two years, but she could moderate her funereal clothing a bit after a while to “half-mourning,” which consisted of pinstripe black. Parents and children were to be mourned for a year, a brother, sister or grandparent for six months, an uncle or aunt for three months, and a first cousin got six weeks. (In-laws were mourned too, but for lesser periods of time.) Some women remained in their mourning garb for the rest of their lives. “Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pipchin,” we are told in Dombey, “but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn’t light her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles.” Of course, the lead in this fashionable mourning was set in part by the queen. After the death of her beloved Albert in 1861 until her own death in 1901 portraits generally show Victoria in the somber black and white attire suitable for honoring the memory of a late departed.

  PART TWO

  Glossary

  abigail—A lady’s maid.

  acceptance—The act of putting one’s name on a bill of exchange and writing “accepted” across it, which then made one liable to pay it.

  The bill of exchange being accepted.

  accommodation note or bill—A bill of exchange that one “accepted” for someone else so he could, in effect, borrow money based on one’s creditworthiness.

  act—A piece of legislation that had passed both Houses of Parliament, been signed by the monarch and become law; before that, it was called a “bill.”

  adder—A snake, especially one that struck out.

  advocate—The name given to the lawyers (counterparts of the serjeants in the common law courts and barristers in the Court of Chancery) who argued cases in the old courts of ecclesiastical law and admiralty law in Doctors’ Commons. The proctors, corresponding to solicitors in the other courts, assisted the advocates.

  advowson—The right to appoint someone to a benefice.

  agent—In rural areas a land agent was the manager of a large estate for one of the great landowners. Sometimes assisted by bailiffs, he oversaw the farming of the property by tenants, a role performed in the previous century by a steward. George Eliot’s father was an agent. In cities a house agent was a person who rented apartments and houses. There were also parliamentary agents who could be hired to help you win an election.

  ague—Basically, malaria and the chills that went with it. Later generalized to include any similar fever or chills.

  aldermen—In a municipal borough, the aldermen were the members of the government, often elected by the council, who were supposed to assist the mayor in governing.

  ale—What was the difference between ale and beer? Sometimes the term “beer” included ale. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes ale was supposed to be stronger than beer, other times not.

  almshouse—Lodgings for the poor supported by private rather than public charity. Publicly funded lodgings were called poorhouses or workhouses.

  ankle jacks—Jackboots that came up above the ankles.

  antimacassar—The Victorian gentleman often applied macassar oil to his hair. To prevent it coming off all over their nice furniture, Victorian ladies pinned antimacassars—little white doilies—on their armchairs and sofas where a gentleman’s head would be. Considering the other hair-control substances that might have come in contact with the nineteenth-century English sofa, macassar oil might not have been so bad—David Copperfield also instances beef suet and bear’s grease.

  St. Paneras Almshouses, Kentish-Town.

  apoplexy—A stroke. Sometimes fatal, sometimes resulting in recovery with partial paralysis but generally accompanied when it struck by paralysis and coma. In Mansfield Park a minister is described as a “short-neck’d, apoplectic sort of fellow and, plied with good things, would soon pop off.”

  apothecary—Among medical men, the lowest ranking socially. They sold drugs and were probably distinguished in their own minds from druggists and chemists by virtue of the fact that they sometimes made house calls and gave advice. There was no way they could become really respectable—selling things over a counter made you a tradesman.

  apprentice—The practice of apprenticing people to a trade lasted well into the 1800s. As a rule, one had to consent to being apprenticed unless one was a workhouse child. The term of apprenticeship was generally seven years and the master who took one on was paid a fee for so doing called a premium. When one finished, one was a journeyman and able to hire oneself out to others for wages.

  apron—Part of a bishop’s characteristic formal garb, the other recognizable element being lawn sleeves.

  appropriated—When tithes from a local parish went to a religious entity other than the incumbent, rather than to a layman, when tithes were said to be impropriated.

  aquatint—A type of etching that looked as if it were done in India ink or watercolor and involved the use of nitric acid.

  arabs, street—Street children, perhaps so called because they had no homes, like the nomadic arab tribes.

  archbishop—There were two archbishops in the Church of England. The archbishop of Canterbury ran the southern part of England and had precedence over the archbishop of York, who ran the northern part. The archbishop of Canterbury took precedence over everyone except the royal family, and was addressed as “Most Reverend.” Perhaps his most important function from the standpoint of many nineteenth-century novels was his ability to grant a “special license,” which permitted you to be married anywhere and at any time, as opposed to the restrictions required by a regular license or by having the banns published.

  archdeacon—The clergyman who assisted the bishop in running the diocese through the inspection tours known as “visitations.” His subordinates were the rural deans. Addressed as “Venerable.” The post held by Dr. Grantly, son-in-law to Septimus Harding, in The Warden.

  area—In London town houses, there was customarily a basement courtyard some six to eight feet below street level that could be reached by a flight of steps from the street. This was the area. It was protected by a railing and sometimes had a water butt in it.

  aristocracy—An imprecise term, but probably most frequently used to designate the peerage.

  armoire—A big clothes cupboard that was either freestanding or set into the wall.

  army list—A list of every commissioned army officer.

  arrowroot—A type of plant, originally from the West Indies, that could be made into a variety of starchy food.

  articled—Legal documents then (and now) are often divided into sections marked “Article 1,” “Article 2,” etc. (They are parts of the document that join together—the root is the same as that of “articulation” in the sense of joining together bones.) When a child was apprenticed to a master, he signed an indenture that was often broken up into such articles so that “to article” someone came to mean binding him to be an apprentice.

  assemblies—Assemblies were large-scale evening gatherings for the quality popular in the early part of the century, the most famous being Almack’s in London. For a ten-guinea subscription, one got
twelve weeks of a ball and supper each week, a highly prestigious event initially, with top members of the aristocracy attending and tickets almost impossible to get.

  assizes (pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable)—In areas outside London, justice was generally dispensed by justices of the peace at the petty or quarter sessions. Civil and criminal cases that were too tricky for them or—like capital cases—too serious, were handled by circuit-riding judges from the superior common law courts in London of Common Pleas, King’s Bench and the Exchequer after they had finished their regular terms. These sessions, supposed to be held twice a year, were the assizes. They were occasions of considerable ceremony. The judges upon arriving in an assizes town were met by the high sheriff, a special assizes sermon was preached and a great banquet was given for the local notables, the actual work of judging beginning on the succeeding day.

  attorney—The term came to be used loosely for any kind of lawyer. Originally, however, it referred only to those lawyers who assisted the serjeants in the common law courts. Attorneys were eliminated when the old court system was abolished in 1873, and their functions were taken over by solicitors.

  backboards—Stiff, straight boards that girls wore against their backs in order to improve their posture. Sometimes they were apparently strapped on.

  back parlor—Many residences, especially small shops, often had a front parlor or shop used for customers or transacting business. The small, modest space at the back of the building for household affairs was the back parlor.

  bagatelle board—Somewhat like billiards. A table with nine holes in it at one end was the playing surface; one tried to knock balls into it with a cue. It turns up in Little Dorrit—Dickens himself played it while barricaded into an inn across the street from a violent election campaign he was covering as a reporter that was probably the model for the Eatanswill goings-on in Pickwick.

  bagman—A commercial traveler, that is, a traveling salesman.

  bailey—The outside wall of a fortress or castle; also the space enclosed by such an outside wall. Old Bailey, the site of the main criminal court in London, was formerly within the confines of the ancient bailey between Ludgate and Newgate, which gave rise to the name.

  bailiff—The term formerly had two principal meanings. On the one hand, it referred to a sheriff’s officer who carried out court orders and, in particular, seized goods or people for debt. In Far from the Madding Crowd Gabriel Oak tries to hire himself out as another kind of bailiff before he goes to work for Bathsheba Everdene; this was the man who managed a large farm for its owner (or assisted an agent in so doing), collecting rents, responding to complaints from tenant farmers, and so on.

  baize—A coarse woolen material used mainly for lining and covering things.

  bakehouse—A structure with an oven in it for baking bread. Bakehouses (or bakeries) would let the poor use these premises to heat their Sunday meals for a small charge since most of the poor lacked ovens and could cook only over an open fire.

  ball—A dance usually of some size and grandeur. Private balls became fashionable as the century wore on. There were also public balls—notably those given by hunt clubs and the like, to which tickets of admission were required.

  ballast lighter—A boat that carried ballast to colliers in the Thames that had unloaded their cargo of coal from the north and needed to take on additional weight in order to sail home safely.

  ballet—Not just sylphs and tutus but a kind of silent cross between vaudeville and commedia dell’arte, often performed in taverns, with slapstick routines and clowns. “They are all comic, like pantomimes,” said one mid-century observer. “They’re like the story of a pantomime, and nothing else.”

  bandbox—A box used for storing or carrying hats and bonnets, etc.

  bands—Part of the customary costume of the clergy when officiating at a service during the early part of the century. The bands were two pieces of cambric, each some four to nine inches long and a few inches wide, connected by a piece that went under the chin, and were generally worn with a black gown and a wig.

  the Bank—a/k/a the Bank of England—a/k/a the “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street” from its location in the City in London. Founded in the late 1600s by a group of merchants as a private institution, it was the main lender to the British government on numerous occasions and became so intertwined with the fiscal affairs of the Treasury as to eventually become semipublic in nature. The Bank Charter Act of 1844 gave it the exclusive right to issue the bank notes which became the universal paper currency in England.

  bank notes—Promissory notes of a bank, that is, a promise by a bank to pay. They were the only form of paper currency in England. They were circulated by numerous banks in England in the early part of the century before the Bank acquired a monopoly on their issue.

  banns—It was the cheapest—but most public—way to get permission to marry. To “publish the banns” required the parish rector or vicar to announce an impending wedding during the service on three consecutive Sunday mornings. If no one arose to “forbid the banns” in the course of the reading—as Clem Yeobright’s mother does in The Return of the Native—the couple could get married within the succeeding three months.

  baptism—Usually incident to a christening, it referred to the practice of dipping a child in water at the font in church by the appropriate Church of England clergyman as the child was brought ceremonially within the fold of the church.

  Bar—Collectively, the barristers of England. To be “called to the bar” meant one had become eligible to practice as a barrister. The “bar” in question was a barrier separating the senior members of an Inn of Court from the junior ones. When the senior members (or benchers) felt a youngster was ready to begin the practice of law he was called forward to join them. In a courtroom, the term “bar” referred to the barrier separating the judge from everyone else, as in “the prisoner at the bar.” It was sometimes erroneously believed that it was this “bar” to which the practice of “calling to the bar” referred.

  bargeman—The owner of or worker on a barge.

  bark—A three-masted sailing ship, the foremost two masts usually being square rigged, the sternmost mast fore-and-aft rigged.

  baron—The term conjures up someone rich and grand—steaming flagons of Rhenish and the hounds scrounging for bones under the table in the great hall. Actually in the 1800s the baron was the lowest of the five ranks of the peerage. He was addressed as “Lord_________,” the “_________” frequently being a surname (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), rather than the territorial designation (the duke of Windsor) favored by the higher peerage. The deceased father of the Blanche Ingram in whom Mr. Rochester interests himself at one point in Jane Eyre was a baron. The judges in the Court of Exchequer were also called barons.

  baronet—Not, in fact, a very small baron, but the title of the first rank below the peerage. A baronet ranked just below a baron and just above a knight and was considered a member of the gentry, not the nobility. He was addressed as “Sir” (he could have “Bt.” or “Bart.” after his name), and his title was hereditary. Fictional baronets include Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair, Sir James Chettam in Middlemarch, Sir Leicester Dedlock in Bleak House, and Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion.

  barouche—A four-wheel fancy carriage with a fold-up hood at the back and with two inside seats facing each other. It was the fancy carriage of the first half of the century.

  barrister—The lawyers in the Court of Chancery who actually argued in court, as opposed to the solicitors, who were not allowed to speak but who met with clients and drew up wills and the like. The Bar enjoyed a good deal of status and was considered a means of gaining entry to political or governmental office. It was suitable for a gentleman, because there was no money grubbing involved—the clients paid the solicitors, who in turn hired and paid the barristers. You could become a barrister only by attending one of the four Inns of Court in London and then being “called to the bar.”

  barrow�
��A small hill or a mound of earth, used as a burial place.

  barton—A farmyard.

  Bath—During the late 1700s the city became popular for the healing properties supposedly to be derived from imbibing or bathing in its mineral water—much recommended in particular for bibulous or gourmandizing gentlemen suffering from gout. Since gout was not exactly a disease likely to afflict the poor, before long Bath became a fashionable gathering spot for the gentry as family members came along to solace the invalid in his nontreatment hours and ladies came along in the hopes of finding someone well-to-do—ill or assisting an invalid—with whom they could arrange an alliance. It spawned the fashionable assemblies and flirtations which Jane Austen describes in Northanger Abbey and has been characterized as the first place in which the gentry were able to assemble and socialize with one another in the way that the nobility had long been able to do in London.

  Bathchair—A big wheelchair used for the propelling of the aged or infirm.

  bathing machine—If one wanted to swim in the sea one climbed into one of these things, which were basically large covered wagons attached to a horse who towed one out into several feet of water. There one was assisted down the steps and into the sea by a frequently unsober female attendant. This was after undressing inside the machines, which were small, uncomfortable, badly ventilated, and poorly lit, the only light coming from tiny openings placed high up to deter voyeurs. In the water one either swam or hung onto the rope attached to the machine while the waves washed over one. Men and women swam many yards apart—partly because men swam nude until the 1870s.