turn-down collars and Byronic neckties: the poet Byron’s fondness for loose collars and flowing neckerchiefs was much imitated by romantic young men.
6th of September last: all other references to the date of George’s disappearance give 7th of September.
Maria Manning … guest: Maria Manning (a former lady’s maid) and her husband Frederick (a railway guard) invited Maria’s lover, Patrick O’Connor, to dinner at their lodgings in Bermondsey on 9 August 1849, killed him, and buried his body in quicklime under the floor. Their trial was widely and sensationally reported. They were executed in November 1849.
mandrake: there was a superstition that this poisonous plant, which has forked roots which resemble a human form, would shriek when it was pulled from the ground.
detective police officer: the London Metropolitan Police established its first detective branch in 1842.
monomaniac: in mid-Victorian psychiatry the term monomania was applied to a range of irrational obsessions, but it was particularly used to designate a delusional fixation on one particular subject. In his Mental Maladies: A Treatise of Insanity, trans. E. K. Hunt (Philadephia: Lee and Blanchard [1845]), J. E. D. Esquirol suggested that monomania was a disease to which the modern educated classes were particularly prone: ‘the more the understanding is developed, and the more active the brain becomes, the more mania is to be feared’ (pp. 200–1).
the blacksmith your honour tould to see to the locks: blacksmiths also worked as locksmiths in the mid-nineteenth century.
the Teniers school: the Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger (1610–90) is famous for pictures of village life and scenes of groups eating and drinking.
colourless extract of the juniper berry: gin, particularly favoured by the lower classes because it was cheap.
as Hamlet’s mother says, ‘is common’: ‘Thou know’st ’tis common – all that lives must die, | Passing through nature to eternity.’ Hamlet, I. ii. 72–3.
à la Maintenon: named after the Marquise de Maintenon (1635–1719), second wife of Louis XIV, this way of cooking cutlets was very popular in the mid-Victorian period, and is included in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. The meat is wrapped in buttered paper before cooking and is served in a white sauce made with cream, egg yolks, and other delicacies.
Tom Jones: Henry Fielding’s long, digressive novel, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749).
Don Juan: Byron’s satiric epic poem written and published in instalments between 1818 and 1824.
the metaphysical diablerie of the Peau de Chagrin, and the hideous social horrors of Cousin Bette: Balzac classified his 1831 novel La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Ass’s Skin or The Magic Skin), as a philosophical study. Like Cousin Bette (1846), which belongs to the Scènes de la Vie Parisienne, it was part of Balzac’s novel sequence, La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy).
annual: also known as a giftbook or keepsake, an annual was a collection of poems, illustrations, essays, and short fiction, often given as a Christmas gift.
lucifer: a wooden match with a chemical tip, ignited by friction.
Julienne: a clear soup containing thin strips of vegetables.
Junius Brutus … ordered his son off for execution: Lucius Junius Brutus became the first consul of Rome after proclaiming a republic and expelling the Tarquin monarchy. He subsequently ordered the execution of his sons for conspiring to restore the monarchy.
reversed fasces of the lictors: in ancient Rome fasces were bundles of rods bound together around an axe. They were carried by their assistants, the lictors, before the magistrates as a symbol of their authority. At the funerals of magistrates their reversed fasces were carried behind the bier.
Roman virtues: these were the qualities which were supposed to govern both public and private life in ancient Rome. George’s father has an excess of the sterner virtues, but lacks those of generosity, mercy, and tolerance.
long Johnsonian sentences: the novelist, essayist, and dictionary compiler Samuel Johnson (1709–84) was well known for his long and complex Latinate sentences.
bird’s-eye tobacco: a strong tobacco manufactured from the whole leaf, including the ribs; particularly favoured by fishermen.
Cupid takes the fillet from his eyes: Cupid the god of love is usually depicted wearing a strip of cloth or ribbon, described as a fillet.
the stately John Kemble: John Philip Kemble (1757–1853), the actor, theatre manager, and dramatist, was well known for the stateliness and deliberativeness of his acting style.
Niobe’s face, sublimated by sorrow: in Greek myth when the seven sons and seven daughters of Niobe, Queen of Thebes, were killed by Apollo and Artemis the grief-stricken mother turned to stone and her ceaseless tears formed a stream.
arrière pensée: an unstated doubt or hidden thought that prevents one from accepting something completely; a mental reservation.
elevated to the woolsack or disbarred by our brother benchers: rise to the office of Lord Chancellor (who sits on the woolsack—a stuffed cushion—in the House of Lords), or be deprived of the privileges and status of a barrister by senior members of the Inns of Court.
Mr Copeland’s manufacture: Copeland and Garrett made earthenware goods, pottery, and porcelain in Stoke-on-Trent; they took over the firm of Spode.
galère: tricky or awkward situation.
eat lotuses, and fancy it “always afternoon”: Tennnyson’s ‘The Lotus Eaters’ (1832) refers to ‘a land | In which it seemed always afternoon’. Based on an episode in Homer’s Odyssey, Tennyson’s poem describes how the sailors visit the land where the lotus grows and those who eat the lotus fruit lose all desire to work or resume their voyage home.
The Eastern potentate … mischief: in the frame story of The Arabian Nights, King Shahryar, the ruler of an extensive empire, goes mad after being betrayed by his wife. Believing that all women will betray him, he takes a new wife each night and has her killed in the morning, until he marries Scheherezade who avoids death by telling him a story each night for 1,001 nights, each time ending with a cliffhanger.
Semiramides, and Cleopatras, and Joan of Arcs, Queen Elizabeths, and Catharine the Seconds: all examples of powerful women leaders. Semiramis was a legendary Assyrian queen and the subject of Rossini’s 1823 opera Semiramide. Cleopatra was queen of Egypt, Jeanne d’Arc was a mystic who led a French troop against the English army at Orléans in 1429, Elizabeth I ruled England from 1558 to 1603, and Catherine the Great ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796.
India Bonds, Spanish Certificates, and Egyptian Scrip: all types of investment bonds or certificates.
uncut romances: novels whose pages have not yet been cut open.
the servant who fears to lay his talent by in a napkin: a reference to the New Testament parable about the value of the different uses that various servants make of money that they are given by their master (Luke 19: 20).
Thomas à Kempis: (c. 1380–1471), a Dutch-educated German monk and mystic, author of the devotional work The Imitation of Christ.
Paulde Kock and Dumas fils: Charles-Paulde Kock (1793–1871) wrote popular, often sexually explicit novels about Parisian life. For Dumas see note to p. 122.
the Directory: the Post Office Directory, usually known as Kelly’s Directory after its publisher Frederick Kelly, listed the principal residents, businesses, and facilities of British towns and cities.
Gunpowder and Bohea: varieties of tea.
Hazlitt … tea: the poet and essayist William Hazlitt (1778–1830) repeatedly referred in his writings to the pleasures of tea drinking, and also to the pains of lacking appropriate teapots and china.
pearl powder and Mrs Rachel Levison: from her shop in London’s New Bond Street Sarah Rachel Levinson (also known as ‘Madame Rachel’) sold expensive cosmetics which promised to make women ‘Beautiful For Ever!’. These included pearl powder, a skin treatment supposedly made with crushed pearls but often adulterated with toxic substances. Twice imprisoned for fraud, she died in the Working Inval
id Convict prison in 1880. She is the model for Mrs Oldershaw in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale (1864–6).
The desolation of desolations … which pervades a new and unfinished neighbourhood: see also chapter 6 of Dickens’s Dombey and Son and part 1 chapter 7 ofWilkie Collins’s Basil (1852) on the horror of new suburbs.
the tally business: a system of buying goods on credit and paying for them in instalments. The tally-man, who sold goods on credit and/or collected the instalments, was a feared figure in lower-class districts.
Pembroke table: a small drop-leaf table on castors, possibly named after Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (1693–1751), an amateur architect.
Dutch clock: cheap wooden clock with brass wheels and pendulum, invented by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1656.
gaudily-japanned: varnished or lacquered with a heavy varnish that originally came from Japan; decorated in a Japanese style.
chiffonier: a small cupboard with a raised back.
drugget: a coarse woollen cloth used as a floor covering or underlay for a carpet.
a set of variations to Deh Conte: ‘Deh! conte’ is a duet in Act 2 of Norma, an opera by Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35).
Letsome: in her note to the Broadview edition (p. 254), Natalie Houston suggests that this refers to Sampson Letsome’s The Preacher’s Assistant (1753), a bibliography of all the sermons published since the Reformation, indexed by biblical passage. I have been unable to trace any directory or memorandum book linked to the name of Letsome.
St Martin’s-le-Grand: a street in the City of London (between Newgate Street and Cheapside) and the site of the headquarters of the General Post Office.
Wildernsea: an invention of Braddon’s.
Timon: a misanthropic Athenian who exiled himself from human society. His story is told in classical literature and in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens.
whirling teetotum: a light spinning top with letters painted on it, originally used in gambling games.
the marble-legged prince in the Eastern story: ‘The History of the Young King of the Black Isles’ in The Arabian Nights.
monomania: see note to p. 127.
the national schoolmaster: a teacher in one of the schools established in 1811 by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.
Pallas Athene: the Greek goddess of wisdom.
camphor, and sal volatile, and red lavender: the first two are remedies for fainting; oil of red lavender stimulates the appetite and is a tonic against faintness, nervous palpitations, giddiness, spasms, and colic.
what Macbeth tells his physician: an allusion to Act V, Scene iii of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: ‘Cure her of that: | Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d … ?’ (ll. 40–1), and ‘Throw physic to the dogs—I’ll none of it’ (l. 47).
Monsieur Mazers de Latude: Jean-Henri Masers de Latude (1720–85), a fraudster who secretly sent a letter bomb to the powerful Marquise de Pompadour and then informed her of a supposed plot against her life hoping to secure a reward. He was incarcerated in the Bastille from which he made the first of a series of prison escapes. He subsequently wrote an account of his imprisonment, which was translated into English in 1787 as Despotism Unveiled: or the Memoirs of Latude, Detained for Thirty-five Years in the Various Prisons of the State.
madness is more often transmitted from father to son … than from mother to son: this was the common nineteenth-century view of the process of the hereditary transmission of madness, although it was generally believed that ‘The tendency of the mother to transmit her mental disease is … stronger than the father’s’ (Andrew Wynter, The Borderlands of Insanity (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1875), 52, quoted by Jenny Bourne Taylor in the Penguin edition of Lady Audley’s Secret, 447).
Sir Robert Peel: (1788–1850), prominent politician who served as Irish Secretary (1812–18), Home Secretary (1822–7, 1827–30), and Prime Minister (1834–5 and 1841–6). During his periods as Home Secretary he led reform of the criminal justice system and founded the Metropolitan Police (1829).
Bayard: Pierre Terrail LeVieux, seigneur de Bayard (c.1473–1524), known as ‘le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche’ (the knight without fear and beyond reproach). His reputation for loyalty and bravery made him a model of knightly perfection.
mute inglorious Miltons … Cromwells: a reference to Thomas Gray’s much-quoted poem, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard’ (1751):
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood (ll. 57–60)
Valhalla: in Norse myth the hall of dead heroes.
écarté: a card game for two players which uses only the cards with a value of seven or above.
façon de parler: expression of speech.
soft answers for the turning away of wrath: a reference to Proverbs 15: 1: ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.’
Northern Yankeydom … blustering Jonathan: the novel was written and published during the American Civil War, which began in 1861. ‘Jonathan’ is used here as a generic term for the Yankees of the Northern States.
scenas and fantasias: parts of an opera scene or dramatic vocal pieces written in operatic style, and pieces of music in an improvisational style.
Mr Holman Hunt: (1827–1910), a leading Victorian painter and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
a bishop’s half-length: a particular size of canvas (44 or 45 inches by 56).
Benvenuto Cellini: (1500–71), Italian sculptor and metalsmith who worked in a highly ornate style.
bearing the cipher of Austrian Maria Antoinette: the stamp of the initials of the wife of King Louis XVI of France, daughter of the Empress of Austria.
Parian marble and biscuit china: marble from the Greek island of Paros and unpainted glazed china.
Louis the Great … Jeanne Marie du Barry: kings of France, Louis XIV and Louis XV, and their respective mistresses. Madame du Barry was guillotined in 1793, during the Terror that followed the French Revolution.
Sèvres porcelain: produced at the porcelain manufactory in the town of Sèvres. Designated the ‘Royal Porcelain Manufactory’, when Louis XV became its principal shareholder in 1759, it manufactured luxury porcelain mainly for the royal family, the court, and the aristocracy.
Aladdin’s palace: in ‘Aladdin; Or the Wonderful Lamp’ in The Arabian Nights, Aladdin, the son of a poor widow, acquires a magic lamp and ring which enable him to become extremely wealthy and defeat his enemies.
Lucretia Borgia and Catherine de’ Medici: famous examples of women associated with power and violence. Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), the illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI), married the duke of Ferrara in 1501 following the stabbing of her lover and the murder of her second husband (by order of her brother Cesare Borgia). Catherine de’ Medici (1519–89), a member of a powerful dynasty, married Henry II of France. Following his death and that of her eldest son Francis II she became extremely powerful as regent for her son Charles IX.
Leroy’s and Benson’s: Leroy et Cie (Paris) and J. W. Benson (London) were both manufacturers of clocks for the luxury market.
Gobelin tapestried: the Gobelins factory has a long history of producing luxury tapestries. It became part of Louis XIV’s Royal Manufactory of Furniture in 1662 and in 1825 it absorbed the Savonnerie rug works.
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