What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

by Daniel Pool

  cord—Rope, especially when it was being used to tie up boxes. Also, corduroy when used for clothing.

  coral—A toy made out of coral that infants were given when they were teething.

  cordial—A friendly-sounding type of alcoholic beverage that was supposedly medicinal.

  corn—Not the corn on the cob of the United States. Corn in England—as in the corn factor Henchard of The Mayor of Casterbridge or as in the corn laws that were finally repealed in 1846—consisted of cereals, i.e., oats, wheat, barley, or rye, the former three being of vital importance in the English economy.

  corn laws—Laws passed during the Napoleonic Wars and after to put a tariff on imported corn in order to protect domestic farmers. These laws drove working people and manufacturers wild because they raised both the price of food of the former and the cost of the wages the latter had to pay the former so they could buy the food. The laws were finally repealed after a big battle in 1846 that was hailed in some quarters as a victory of the new manufacturing classes over the old landed oligarchy.

  cornelian—A kind of reddish quartz used for making seals.

  corn factor—Someone who bought and sold corn: the occupation of the protagonist of The Mayor of Casterbridge.

  cornet—The lowest commissioned rank in the cavalry until 1871. The cornet carried the battle flag of the regiment like his counterpart in the infantry, the ensign.

  Cornhill—A principal east-west thoroughfare in London.

  coroner—The coroner was supposed to investigate all suspicious deaths by empaneling a jury of local men to hear the relevant evidence. His conclusion—if he found there to be foul play—had the force of an indictment. He sometimes went by the title “crowner.”

  coronet—Just as the royal family got to wear big crowns, members of the peerage got to wear little crowns (which is what “coronet” means). Each rank had a distinctive headpiece: dukes—strawberry leaves (made of precious stones, of course); marquesses—strawberries and pearls; earls—pearls plus leaves; and viscounts—a line of pearls. Barons got six pearls.

  corporation—The governing body, usually the mayor and aldermen, and sometimes the council, of an incorporated borough or city.

  corps—Generally a regiment.

  correspondent—Someone who has regular business dealings with someone else who is usually far away.

  corset—The fashionable size for a waist in the 1800s was alleged to be eighteen inches. A corset was the device used to attain this width or something close to it. It consisted of two halves, reinforced with whalebone, that got hooked together in front and then laced up in back. Compressing all that flesh into a small area was not always an easy job. The corset was one reason women needed a lady’s maid—someone to stand behind them to pull the laces tight.

  costermonger—Street sellers of fruits, vegetables, and fish in London. Some had barrows and wandered through the streets; some had permanent stalls. There were some 12,000 of them in London in the 1850s. A trick of the less scrupulous was to buy a few good cherries, say, and spread them over the top of a bunch of bad ones in order to move the produce that was no good.

  cotillion (also cotillon)—A dance that caught on toward the end of the 1800s. Usually danced toward the end of the evening at fancy balls, it was in part a game. It took such forms as La Trompeuse, where the lady walked over to two gentlemen and after asking one to dance, walked off with the other when the first one accepted. Or there was Fish on the Line. The young lady held a fishing rod and two men came over to try to seize the biscuit dangled from the end of it while on their hands and knees.

  cottagers—The people at the bottom of the heap in rural areas. Generally, they lived in the cottages owned by the local landowner while working on his estate or practicing their craft as blacksmith or carpenter or whatever in the village. With luck, they could use a few acres out back for a garden or as a place to graze their pig, as do Tess Durbeyfield’s parents. In the days when leases ran for generations, their position was not so insecure, but as the 1800s wore on and commercial farming flourished, their status became more and more precarious and their condition, often, more degraded.

  Costermonger.

  cottage piano—An upright piano of modest size.

  counsel—See King’s Counsel.

  counterpane—A quilt or other similar bed covering with a raised design of some kind.

  countess—The wife of an earl in England. The Saxon earl who, along with the sheriff, ran the shire in pre-Norman England kept his title when the Normans changed the “shires” to “counties.” His wife, however, became a countess.

  counting house—A businessman’s office.

  count-out—The process used in the House of Commons to ascertain if there were a quorum (forty). (The quorum in the House of Lords was three.)

  country—In fox-hunting terms, a country is an area in which a pack may draw.

  country-dance—An old-fashioned, often vigorous dance popular in the first half of the century—it is danced in Jane Austen’s novels. It was really a kind of square dance. Men and women lined up in two rows opposite one another and then either as couples or lines danced through various “figures.”

  county family—A family of the nobility or gentry that had had a big estate in a county for many years.

  county member—A member of Parliament who represented a county, as opposed to a borough.

  courier—A man who journeyed with or ahead of wealthy people traveling in Europe in order to make—or check on—accommodations and other travel arrangements in the days before telephones and faxes.

  coursing—A sport that involved chasing hares or other game with greyhounds.

  court—In cities, an alley between two or more buildings. When it appeared in the name of a property, such as Ullathorne Court in Barchester Towers, the term referred to a house built around a central courtyard, like Hampton Court.

  Court Circular—The officially promulgated word as to what was happening on a daily basis at court, handed out to the newspapers, starting in 1803, at the behest of George III. A sample from 1841: “Her Majesty and Prince Albert fell through the ice at Frogmore on Tuesday last, he skating and she following him around in her sledge. But they were extricated with only a slight inconvenience from the cold water.”

  Court Guide—A listing of the nobility, the gentry and everyone who had been presented at court. In the days before phone books, it was one way to find the address in London of those of “rank.”

  cousin—It was okay to marry them, even first cousins.

  Covent Garden—The main fruit and vegetable market in London, located near Charing Cross. Near the theater district, it was also a haunt of prostitutes.

  covert—Also spelled “cover.” The thicket of bushes or shrubs in which a fox or other game would seek refuge when hunted—and from which the hounds tried to oust him so everyone could have fun chasing him across the countryside.

  coverture—The legal doctrine that a man controlled and protected his wife.

  crape—A kind of black silk that was in great demand for mourning garb. After about 1840 this spelling—in contrast to “crepe”—always connoted a mourning garment.

  cravat—Generally a loose kind of fine cloth that was tied around the neck in a bow.

  cribbage—A card game, played usually by two people, with a little board with sixty-one holes in it in which pegs were put to keep score.

  crinoline—Made of linen and horsehair, it was a support for skirts. The “cage crinoline” was a frame construction for supporting wide skirts that replaced the original, bulkier crinoline fabric and produced a huge, inflated look and made walking through narrow doorways (or avoiding knocking bric-a-brac off tables in small parlors) virtually impossible.

  crofter—A renter or owner of a small holding.

  cross—To cross a letter or a note was to fill up a page in the normal fashion and then turn it ninety degrees and write across it, a habit originally adopted in the days before the advent of the n
ational penny post in 1840 when postage was very expensive. There were, not surprisingly, complaints about its being hard to read.

  croup—An infant’s disease, often confused with diphtheria until the 1820s and 1830s, that caused coughing and was often rapidly fatal.

  crown—A coin worth five shillings.

  crowner—Another term for coroner.

  cruet—One of the little glass containers with a stopper in which oil and vinegar were put.

  cruiser—The light boats of the British navy. “They are small men of war, employed to sail to and fro in the Channel, and elsewhere, to secure our merchant ships and vessels from the enemy’s small frigates and privateers,” wrote an 1815 source.

  crumpet—A soft kind of muffin made out of egg, milk, and flour, supposedly quite light.

  crush hat—So called because that was what one could do to it. Also called an opera hat or Gibus. There were springs inside so that when one wore it to the opera one could remove it and fold it up flat.

  cub hunting—The hunting of young foxes in September to train inexperienced hounds and riders before the real fox-hunting season began.

  curate—The clergyman who assisted the incumbent of a living. Often desperately poor—and to be distinguished from the “perpetual curate,” who had a living and was basically equivalent to a vicar.

  curfew—A nightly bell rung at the instigation of William the Conqueror requiring households to extinguish their fires (couvre + feu). The once-mandatory tolling lingered in some parishes even into the 1800s, serving such purposes as to signal the end of the shop day.

  curl papers—In the dark days before plastic curlers ladies used papers to obtain the ringlets that were de rigueur during certain decades of the nineteenth century. Sometimes old newspapers were pressed into service to this end.

  currant—Little, round shiny berries. There were red, black, and white varieties, sort of like raspberries, that grew wild on shrubs and were edible. There were also “currants” used for cooking that were actually raisins.

  curricle—A two-wheel carriage that was fashionable in the early 1800s. It was like a gig except it was pulled by two horses rather than one and it was evidently deemed rather sporty by the younger set.

  curtain lecture—An admonishing lecture that a wife gave her husband when they went to bed.

  curtsey—An approved way of showing respect, perhaps not much in evidence after the turn of the mid-century except when made by social inferiors like maids to the better off or when made by the better off during presentation at court.

  Custom House—An imposing official building on the north bank of the Thames that stood fiscal guard over the entrance to the port of London east of London Bridge. Built between 1814 and 1817; as late as 1871 about half the country’s civil service worked in customs collection.

  cut—A form of social discouragement that involved pretending not to know or see a person who was trying to be acknowledged. Etiquette books said it should only be used by young ladies trying to discourage unwelcome attentions from gentlemen, but many others “cut” people, too.

  cutglass—Glass, usually of a very fine quality, that had been cut and polished, often in such a way that light passing through it would be split into various colors, as if by a prism.

  d—Stands for denarius, Latin for penny. Hence, used as the abbreviation for pence, as in 5d.

  dab—A little flat edible fish like a flounder. Also, slang for someone who was an expert at something.

  dairymaid—Many large country houses had them. They made butter and milked the cows.

  damascene—A damson.

  damask—A fancy silk or linen fabric that had raised designs on it, typically of flowers. Used often for table linen.

  damson—A kind of small plum a/k/a damascene, although sometimes the damascene was said to be larger and sweeter than the damson.

  Davy lamp—A miner’s lamp invented by Sir Humphry Davy.

  deacon—The lowest of the three orders of clergy in the Church of England. A deacon was a trainee rector or vicar.

  deal—Apparently made often of pine, deal was a plank usually measuring about three inches thick and seven or so wide. Generally found in a context suggesting cheap furniture or surroundings.

  dean—The man who ran the chapter attached to a cathedral church. He was addressed as “Very Reverend” and the dean’s job, as well as the house occupied by a dean, was called a deanery. “The deans often quarrel with their bishops,” wrote a contemporary American observer, “especially about the control of the cathedrals. There have been fierce fights over the reredos and the ornaments in the choir.” Rather lower in status were rural deans, who were assistants to the archdeacon.

  Debrett—An annually published guide to the peerage.

  debt of honor—A gambling debt, so called because it was generally not enforceable at law, so that one had to depend for repayment on the “honor” of the person who incurred it.

  decant—To pour wine out of the bottle into another container so that the pure liquid can be separated from the dregs and sediment—which remain in the bottle. Decanters were favorite items in Victorian dining rooms.

  decree nisi—A provisional divorce decree. The court granted a divorce that was final after six months unless something happened during that time to suggest that it shouldn’t be.

  demesne—The land attached to a manor house on which the house itself was situated and which was for the occupant’s personal use, as opposed to the land farmed by the lord’s tenants.

  depot—A military term for a place where supplies were stored.

  Derby (pronounced “Darby”)—The great popular horse race in England in the 1800s—eagerly watched by all classes—so popular that Parliament even adjourned for it. Held around the end of May or beginning of June at Epsom Downs about fifteen miles from London. The other great horse race was Ascot—later in the season—but it was considerably more exclusive socially.

  diligence—A French stagecoach, sometimes said to be rather heavy.

  dimity—A kind of cotton used for wall hangings and dresses.

  dining with Duke Humphrey—To go hungry.

  dinner—In Jane Austen’s time, an era when there was virtually no such thing as “lunch,” a meal that followed breakfast. Dinner took place at about three or four in the afternoon and supper came later. Later in the century, after lunch put in an appearance, dinner was moved back to five or six or later by the well-to-do while the lower classes “dined” at midday.

  diocese—In the Church of England, the unit of ecclesiastical administration over which a bishop presided. It was divided into parishes, and—along with other dioceses—made up one of the two provinces of the church.

  dip—A cheap candle made by dipping a wick a number of times into tallow.

  direct—To direct a letter was to address it.

  discount—A term used with reference to the buying and selling of bills of exchange by moneylenders and bill brokers. On the one hand, it referred to the practice of buying a bill at a discount, i.e., a moneylender or bill broker purchased a bill from a creditor before it was due to be paid, giving the creditor less money than he would have received when it was finally due, this difference being the “discount.” Alternatively, the practice referred to a debtor trying to raise money by writing out a bill directly to the moneylender—only for more than the amount which the moneylender actually gave him. Thus, Mr. Micawber talks of going into the City to “discount” some bills with this second meaning. He would thus write out a bill obligating him to pay a moneylender, say, £50 at some future date, and the moneylender would lend him £30, the discount being the £20 difference.

  Dissenters—Members of Protestant churches other than the Church of England, e.g., the Quakers, Unitarians, Methodists, Baptists, etc.

  distrain—A term meaning to seize somebody’s goods and, if it were deemed desirable, sell them, generally because they hadn’t paid their rent. The verb “to distress” was also used with the same
meaning in this context.

  distress—To distrain.

  divan—A public smoking room. Reverend Harding visits one such temple of inhalation in The Warden in the course of his trip to London. A contemporary guidebook described for the visitor “the Divan in the Strand, where for 1s. he has the entree of a handsome room, a cup of coffee and a cigar, and the use of newspapers, periodicals, chess, etc.”

  division—The army unit of organization above a brigade. In the Houses of Parliament, a division was a formal vote on a matter that required the adherents of each side to step into one of the two lobbies adjoining the legislative chamber, where they would be counted.

  dock—The place where the prisoner stood during his trial, a usage apparently first popularized by Dickens in Oliver Twist.

  docks—The big docks in London just east of London Bridge, that is, just before one reached the city coming upriver from the sea. They were the places where the large ships unloaded their cargo, occupying some 450 acres all told, and were built after 1800 by private companies, the East India, West India, and London docks being among the major ones.

  doctor—A title used in Jane Austen’s novels, usually only to designate a doctor of divinity. It was also applied to physicians, but generally not to surgeons, who were known as “Mr.”

  Doctors’ Commons—The area in London south of St. Paul’s Cathedral where the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts were. Here marriage licenses could be obtained and wills were stored. David Copperfield is apprenticed as a law clerk in Doctors’ Commons so he can become a proctor (one of the lawyers who assisted the advocates there but didn’t argue in court). Doctors’ Commons got its name from the fact that an advocate (a lawyer who argued cases there) had to have the degree of doctor of civil law from Oxford or Cambridge to practice, the commons being where the lawyers ate together.

  dog cart—So named because it was originally built to carry dogs in small compartments when going shooting—not because dogs pulled it. It was a two-wheel open cart with seats back to back, much in use in the latter part of the century as sort of a small all-purpose vehicle in the country for well-off families.