What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

by Daniel Pool

  preferment—A job or position that represented a definite step upward financially or socially. To prefer someone to a post was to appoint them to it.

  premium—The sum of money that it was customary for an apprentice or his family or guardian to pay to a master when the boy was apprenticed to him.

  present—To “present” a clergyman “to” a vacant living or benefice meant that the layperson who owned it asked the bishop to officially install the layperson’s candidate in the post. To be presented at court meant attending a formal drawing room or levee at which one was formally brought forward to meet the sovereign, a necessary step for girls “coming out” and for those who wished to be invited to court balls and concerts.

  press—A cupboard or closet, often with shelves in it, for storing clothes or other items.

  Prince Consort—A prince married to a reigning queen. Prince Albert, Victoria’s husband, was the Prince Consort.

  Princess Royal—The oldest daughter of a reigning monarch. When George III was king, his daughter Charlotte was Princess Royal.

  private secretary—A secretary. The adjective “private” evidently distinguished him from the secretary of a group or organization.

  Privy Council—Originally a body of genuine advisers to the Crown, it had become by the 1800s a collection of 250 or so distinguished scientists, writers, contemporary and former cabinet members and the like, sort of an academy of notables. Certain actions could be taken and certain orders given by the sovereign only “in council.” In correspondence, a Privy Council member was “the Right Honourable.”

  privy seal—It was the monarch’s private seal, unlike the great seal, which was that of the monarch acting in his public capacity. Instructions from the monarch to the lord chancellor to take certain official actions—like declaring war—required the chancellor to affix the great seal, which was in his custody, to the relevant document, but the chancellor could only do so upon receiving royal instructions impressed with the privy seal. The lord privy seal, to whom was entrusted custody of the privy seal, was a cabinet member, a political appointee whose job was to devote himself to his political party’s affairs in the time he did not spend once or twice a week putting the privy seal on a document or two.

  prize money—The only way to get rich in the navy. Prize money was the money or other loot obtained from capturing a vessel and dividing up the proceeds among the capturing crew or crews. The ordinary crewmembers got a quarter of the proceeds, lesser-ranked officers like the midshipmen got a quarter, lieutenants and masters got an eighth, and the captain got the rest (unless his ship was part of a squadron, in which case the admiral got a third of the captain’s share).

  proctor—One of the officials at Oxford and Cambridge in charge of undergraduate discipline. Also, the nonlitigating lawyers in Doctors’ Commons.

  prog—Slang for food.

  province—One of the two administrative units into which the Church of England divided England. The northern province was ruled by the archbishop of York, the southern by the archbishop of Canterbury.

  provost—A title given to the heads of some of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.

  pub—Usually, a tavern or an inn.

  public ball—Any large, open-to-the-public dance, such as a hunt ball or a charity ball. Distinguished on the one hand from a private ball—by invitation only in a private home—and on the other from the assemblies, which were generally like private balls in being restricted to the upper crust but were originally held in a subscription series and devoted to conversation as much as dancing.

  publican—An alehouse or pub keeper or owner.

  public school—e.g., Eton, Harrow, or Rugby. Such schools before 1800 were originally for any children in the immediate locality and hence “public” in the true sense. When they became more exclusively institutions for the rich, they were still distinguished from private boarding schools like Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickelby, which were run by their headmasters or founders for profit.

  pump room—The room at watering places like Bath where you drank and/or bathed in the supposedly curative mineral waters. Also, of course, as we see in Northanger Abbey, such a room served as a place to meet and gossip.

  pupil-teacher—The name of the apprenticeship system in the national schools. A pupil would apprentice himself to a teacher who would supervise him and educate him while the pupil in turn taught others under the teacher’s supervision. After 1846, the pupil-teacher route became one of the pathways to the training college normal school.

  purse—What a gentleman carried to hold his coins so as not to spoil the line of his tights with unsightly bulges when he was wearing the fashionably tight trousers of the early part of the century. We know Marley is a man of the old school because he appears to Scrooge in tights and numbers purses among the objects of greed and miserliness that are fettered to his spectral self.

  pursy—Fat and short of breath.

  Puseyite—An adherent of E.B. Pusey, a professor of Hebrew at Oxford, who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

  putrid fever—Typhus fever.

  quadrille—Originally a card game played by four people with forty cards that was the fashionable predecessor of whist. Also, the dance that became popular in the mid-century, which had five figures, or sets of movements. It was basically a slowed-down square dance, involving four couples who started from the four points of an imaginary diamond. Even by the mid-century the dance had slowed down practically to a walk. It was used as the lead-off dance at almost all dances and balls, the waltz and the polka following.

  quality—“The quality,” says Trollope in Barchester Towers, is how “the upper classes in rural districts are designated by the lower.”

  quarter—One of the four parts of the year demarcated by the quarter days. Also, a quarter was a measurement of volume equal to eight bushels. Finally, it was the name of a measurement of weight equal to twenty-eight pounds.

  quarter days—Four days which were traditionally used to mark when rents were due, periods of employment terminated and the like. The quarter days were Lady Day (March 25), Midsummer (June 24), Michaelmas (September 29), and Christmas (December 25).

  quarterdeck—On a ship it was the deck behind the main deck, usually only running from the stern to the sternmost mast and sometimes raised a step or more above the main deck. As a rule, it was for use only by the passengers and officers.

  quartered—A reference to a coat of arms, which was often divided into four or more areas, generally in order to display the arms of different branches of the family, e.g., those of the husband and those of the wife.

  quartern—A quartern was an old-fashioned way of designating one quarter of various measurements, i.e., a stone, an ounce, a pint, or a peck. A quartern loaf of bread weighed about four pounds. Apparently, they cut bread thick in those days, for a contemporary writer observes that it yielded only sixteen slices.

  quarter session—A joint sitting of all the justices of the peace in a county, held at least four times a year, to decide on the weighty matters of criminal and civil justice they could not handle independently. Cases that were too complicated or capital in nature, however, were held off for the assizes.

  quarto—A book size named for a sheet of paper that had been folded twice and thus yielded four leaves (eight pages). It was approximately as high as it was wide.

  quay—A dock or other place built out of stone to unload ships.

  Queen’s Counsel—See King’s Counsel.

  Queer Street—To be “in Queer Street” meant to be hard up for money.

  quickset—A hedge made from cuttings of hawthorn and similar shrubs.

  quid—A sovereign. Slang.

  quinsy—Basically, tonsillitis.

  quiz—Someone or something that was peculiar; someone who mocked others.

  Quorn—One of the oldest and most prestigious of the fox-hunting packs in England. Named for Quorn Hall in the Midlands where the pack was first bred in the m
id-1700s.

  R. A.—Member of the Royal Academy, a combination official art school and exhibition hall founded by George III.

  race—A channel of water, generally artificially produced, directed toward some point like a mill where its power would be harnessed.

  raddle—See reddle.

  radical—The name applied in the early part of the century to extreme liberals like Jeremy Bentham. It was also applied to certain members of Parliament active in the agitation for the Reform Act of 1832.

  rag-and-bone shop—A shop that bought and sold rags that could be made into paper (since much clothing was then linen) and bones that could be ground up and made into manure. In addition, they sometimes bought other rather odiferous things like dripping. Mr. Krook in Bleak House is a rag-and-bone man.

  ragbag—Among the perquisites of some servants was the right to maintain a ragbag into which they could throw the household’s discarded linen for sale at their own profit, presumably to rag-and-bone shops.

  rank—A person of rank was a person of considerable social standing.

  ranker—A rank was a line of ordinary soldiers lined up next to one another, just as “file” meant that they were lined up in front of each other. (Hence, the “rank and file” were the ordinary soldiers). A “ranker” was an officer who had advanced from the ranks instead of buying his commission. There were also “gentleman rankers”—immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in verses later set to music by Cole Porter for Yale persons. These were gentlemen who disgraced themselves in civilian life and sought refuge and anonymity among the ranks rather than among the army’s officers.

  Ranters—A term used for Primitive Methodists, a denomination started in the first decade of the 1800s.

  rapeseed—The seed of the rape plant, which is a cousin of the turnip. It was used as feed for sheep.

  rasher—A not very thick slice of ham or bacon.

  ratcatcher—A great occupation for the not so well educated who enjoyed work with some mild excitement to it. A ferret was made to sneak down the holes after the rats and then drive them out into the open where a terrier seized them by the scruff of the neck and did them in. Alternatively, ratcatchers simply poisoned the rats. It was not a marginal occupation; some very fancy London nurseries were attacked by rats owing to the deplorable conditions of the drains and sewage system.

  rate—Until the middle of the century, the rate of a ship-of-war was based on the number of guns the vessel carried. First-rates carried 100 guns or more, second-rates between 100 and 75, and so on down to sixth-rates, which carried 20 to 28 guns. In an altogether different context, a “rate” was a local parish tax or assessment levied for various purposes, such as the care of the poor (the poor rate), the upkeep of the local church (the church rate), and so forth. It was distinct from the tithe, which went not to the government but to the local rector or vicar or perpetual curate. The rates should not be confused with various nationally imposed government taxes, e.g., on glass, windows, newspapers, dogs, hats, etc.

  reading desk—A lectern in a church used for reading part of the Sunday service, often, apparently, placed underneath the pulpit.

  read—An expression meaning to study, as in to “read law,” i.e., with a senior lawyer. Also, chapter 23 of Barchester Towers is called “Mr. Arabin reads himself in.” This referred to the practice of an incumbent reading the Thirty-nine Articles aloud to his congregation upon assuming his new office.

  reader—An old-fashioned position indicating a senior status among the lawyers belonging to one of the Inns of Court.

  rector—A parish clergyman entitled to all the tithes, as opposed to a vicar or a perpetual curate, who only got some of them. He was addressed as “Reverend.”

  recusant—Someone who refused to attend Church of England services. A name originally given to Catholics and Dissenters; subsequently applied more generally to people who wouldn’t obey authority.

  Red Book—The term sometimes referred to a book containing the names of everyone who worked for the government. In the second half of the century it was also the name given to a book that listed the nobility and gentry, along with their addresses.

  reddle—A kind of red chalk used for marking sheep to identify their owners. Useful because it would wash off and not permanently color the wool that was sheared from them.

  reel—A Scotch dance that involved at least two couples and usually the execution of some kind of a figure eight.

  refectory—The dining hall of a large institution like a monastery or school.

  Reform Act—The Reform Act of 1832 sought to put an end to rotten boroughs and the underrepresentation of middle-class voters. This was done by extending the franchise and by more evenly redistributing parliamentary seats among the boroughs. Previously, political power had rested almost exclusively with the nobility and gentry, who thereby controlled Parliament and the affairs of the nation. Thus, the borough of Old Sarum was represented in Parliament although it had no inhabitants, while the big new, industrial cities of the north like Birmingham and Manchester had no representation at all. The Reform Act was a gigantic shock to the whole system of rule by the titled landowners who had governed the country more or less unchallenged until then. The Second Reform Act in 1867 extended the franchise to many workers in towns. (Women got the vote in the 1900s.)

  Regency—See regent.

  regent—A person who reigned on behalf of a monarch who for some reason could not. George III went permanently insane in 1810. His son, the Prince of Wales, later George IV, thereupon became prince regent. The period from then until his father’s death in 1820 subsequently acquired the name of the Regency period.

  regiment—The permanent and important unit in the British army throughout the nineteenth century. It usually numbered some 750 to 1,000 men and was made up of eight to ten companies, each commanded by a captain. Sometimes, too, a regiment was grouped into one or two battalions. In name the colonel was the commander of the regiment; in practice, it was generally the lieutenant colonel who ran things.

  register—In 1800 every church in England maintained a register in which were recorded the births and deaths of all the inhabitants of the parish. In addition, each married couple signed the register in the vestry right after the wedding ceremony. The entries served the purpose not only of making the birth or marriage valid in the eyes of the church but making it civilly legal as well. This latter function was taken over by the registrar beginning in 1836.

  registrar—The local official, who came into existence in 1836, who had to be notified of all births and deaths within the county. He could also issue marriage licences for civil and nonconformist marriages.

  regular—The regular army were the permanent soldiers who could be sent anywhere, anytime to fight. The irregulars were the militia and volunteers who were limited in pay, responsibility, or military commitment.

  rent-roll—The landlord’s list of his rents and rental properties.

  repeater—An old-fashioned watch, very popular in the days before good matches because when one pushed the handle on it, it struck the last hour or quarter hour, thereby enabling one to tell the approximate time in the dark without having to go through the production involved in striking a light with a tinderbox.

  reredo—The screen in front of the choir or behind the altar in a church. In a home, the stone or brick back of a fireplace.

  resurrectionist—A body snatcher. Before 1833, the only corpses that could be used for dissection in the teaching of anatomy were those of executed criminals. There were not enough to fill the demand. Accordingly, doctors informally arranged with resurrectionists to bring them bodies they had spirited away in the dead of night from churchyards. Some, like the infamous Burke and Hare, upon running short of specimens, went a step further and hastened some of their fellow citizens involuntarily into the corpse stage. In a contemporary poem, a ghost told her former lover that the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper had been successful in having the resurrectionists steal her corpse:
“The cock it crows—I must be gone—/My William, we must part;/But I’ll be yours in death although/Sir Astley has my heart.”

  retainer—A servant who had been with a family for years and years.

  reticule—A little bag in which ladies carried their personal toilet articles and the like when the tight, thin muslin dresses with no pockets made it impossible to carry any personal effects actually on their person. Sometimes called a “ridicule.”

  reversion—A legal term meaning that after one had the use of something or other the right to it would revert back to someone else. Usually meaning a right to some fancy position or the enjoyment of an estate after, say, the death of the current occupant.

  ribbon—One was entitled to wear a blue ribbon as part of the getup that went with membership in the Order of the Garter.

  rick—A haystack or cornstack. Sometimes they were thatched to protect them from the rain and put on staddles to keep them from rats and moisture.

  Right Honourable—The formal way to address earls, viscounts, barons, and privy councillors. Also used to a peer’s eldest son bearing as a “courtesy title” an inferior title of his father.

  Right Reverend—Term of address to a bishop.

  Riot Act—Yes, there actually was such a thing as “reading the Riot Act,” namely, the Riot Act of 1714. In the good old days when there was trouble brewing—or actually in progress—a justice of the peace or similar worthy got up and read to the assembled rabble the instructions of the act to disperse, specifically, that any twelve or more persons still causing a ruckus an hour after the Riot Act was read aloud to them would be guilty of a felony.

  robin redbreast—Not the same as the American robin, who was a thrush and about twice the size of his cousin in England. It was considered bad luck to harm a robin. Robin redbreast was also the colloquial name for the Bow Street Runners because of their red vests.

  Stacking wheat on ricks.

  “(Sir) Roger de Coverley”—A jolly type of country dance used to finish off dances and popular at Christmas. It involved the first man and last lady and last man and first lady from two lines of parallel men and women swinging out and then back, then swinging round, then weaving their way through the lines and then promenading, etc. The dance is known in the United States as the Virginia reel.