Oxford World’s Classics

by Jane Austen

  gracefully purloined … Escritoire: euphemistic language for ‘stolen from his father’s writing desk’.

  blushed at … paying their Debts: among the wealthy it was fashionable to leave debts to tradesmen unpaid for as long as possible, putting many businesses in a precarious position. Cf. Charles Surface’s remark in Sheridan’s School for Scandal that ‘paying’ tradesmen ‘is only Encouraging them’ (act 4, scene 1).

  79 an Execution in the House: the seizure of a debtor’s goods by a sheriff ’s officers executing a writ; such an ‘execution’ would be ordered by the creditors. Goods would be sold and the proceeds used to pay off debts.

  79 the Officers of Justice: the sheriff’s officers.

  Holbourn: a district in and route through central London. JA originally wrote ‘Piccadilly’, a more respectable area in the West End (see Textual Notes, p. 227).

  Front Glasses: carriage windows that could be opened and closed.

  Newgate: a notorious prison, featured in many 18th-century novels; cf. ‘snug little Newgate’ in ‘Henry & Eliza’, p. 30 and note.

  80 Annuity: an annual payment or allowance, deriving from return on capital and ceasing on the death of the recipient. Cf. S&S, ch. 2.

  travel Post: a rapid, expensive form of travel, involving a change of horses at each stage. Continuing day and night in this way, travellers could have reached Scotland in about three days.

  81 coroneted Coach & 4: a coach that bears the crest of a peer’s family; four horses indicate great wealth (cf. ‘Mr Clifford’, p. 36 and note).

  82 Acknowledge thee! … Grand-Children in the House: this recognition scene is closely modelled on a famous example in Burney’s Evelina, in which the heroine is finally, elaborately acknowledged by her father, Sir John Belmont, who already has one daughter and has just discovered a son (vol. iii, letters 17 and 19). There is another rapid-fire series of recognitions in Sheridan’s The Critic (act 3, scene 1).

  Janetta: a romanticized version of Janet, itself a Scottish form of Jane; JA is apparently toying with her own name.

  83 never read the Sorrows of Werter: see ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 7; cf. The Loiterer, no. 32, in which the narrator is asked by a young woman ‘whether or no, I had ever read The Sorrows of Werter’ (12). Goethe’s wildly popular tale embodies the excesses of sensibility and hopeless, suicidal love.

  Hair … auburn: red hair was fashionable in the 1780s.

  84 Billet: note.

  Gretna-Green: a town in southern Scotland, just across the border with England, where couples under the age of 21 could be married without parental consent (Hardwicke’s Marriage Act did not apply to Scotland). Janetta and M’Kenzie already reside in Scotland, making the elopement unnecessary.

  86 we sate down … clear limpid stream: alluding to a passage in Samuel Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775): ‘I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude’ (61). The parallel is noted by R. W. Chapman in Minor Works (459) and by Margaret Anne Doody in Catharine and Other Writings (318–19), but disputed by Sabor in Juvenilia (438).

  murmuring brook … turn-pike road: see ‘Ode to Pity’, note to p. 66.

  Eastern Zephyr: ignorant misuse of poetical language, since ‘Zephyr’ in classical mythology is the west wind.

  87 blue sattin Waistcoat striped with white: striped waistcoats were popular in the 1790s, and thanks to The Sorrows of Young Werther blue was a fashionable colour (see ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 7). Cf. also Laura and Augustus, in which the hero’s ‘waistcoat and breeches are white lustring, the waistcoat wrought in rose-buds, and fastened with bunches of silver’ (i, letter 10). JA may also be recalling Tristram Shandy, in which Susannah, on hearing that Bobby is dead, finds herself thinking of ‘a green sattin night-gown of my mother’s’ (v, ch. 7).

  apropos: anglicization of à propos (French): ‘apt’, ‘timely’.

  fashionably high Phaeton: see also ‘Mr Clifford’, note to p. 36, and ‘The three Sisters’, note to p. 53. High phaetons were more unstable than low phaetons and therefore vulnerable to accidents.

  Life of Cardinal Wolsey: Thomas Wolsey (1475–1530), cardinal and statesman during the reign of Henry VIII; his fall from royal favour was often taken to exemplify the dangers of ambition and pride. See e.g. the soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Wolsey in King Henry VIII, comparing his downfall to that of a star (act 3, scene 2), of which Hugh Blair comments in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 2 vols. (1783), a work JA read, that it is ‘at once instructive and affecting’ (lecture 46). See also Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), in which readers are given an account of Wolsey’s rise and fall and instructed to apply it to their own lives (ll. 99–128). Cf. ‘examples from the Lives of great Men’ in ‘The female philosopher’ (p. 152).

  88 sensible: conscious, in possession of his senses; see ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 12.

  Cupid’s Thunderbolts … Shafts of Jupiter: Laura has things the wrong way round: Cupid, god of love, has the shafts or arrows as missiles; the thunderbolts belong to Jupiter, god of sky and thunder and ruler of the Olympians.

  Leg of Mutton … Cucumber: cf. Laura and Augustus, in which the heroine is also given a mad speech after her husband’s death (iii, letter 66); JA is further drawing on Tilburnia’s wild speech in Sheridan’s The Critic (act 3, scene 1), which features similarly absurd and incongruous ravings and is itself a spoof of Ophelia’s speech in Hamlet (act 4, scene 5).

  very plain … Bridget: cf. Richard Steele’s The Tender Husband (1705), in which the quixotic heroine, Bridget, objects to her own name as nothing like that of a heroine (act 2, scene 2).

  89 a galloping Consumption: rapidly developing tuberculosis, or any wasting illness. See ‘Edgar & Emma’, note to p. 24. Characters in sentimental fiction, including the hero of Laura and Augustus (iii, letter 49), often succumb to this rapid but supposedly pale and interesting disease.

  91 Coach-box: an elevated seat at the front of the stagecoach, on which the driver sat.

  91 Basket: a compartment hanging off the back of the coach, designed primarily for luggage; the cheapest and most uncomfortable place to sit.

  92 Gilpin’s Tour to the Highlands: William Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1776, On Several Parts of Great Britain; particularly the High-lands of Scotland, 2 vols. (1789).

  Stage Coach: see ‘Mr Harley’, note to p. 33. This would not have been considered a genteel form of travel.

  converted it into a Stage: a comically extreme drop from gentility into lower-class employment.

  Edinburgh … Sterling: the ancient city of Stirling, known as the gateway to the highlands, is about 40 miles from Edinburgh. In a letter of 23 Aug. 1813, JA refers to this passage; another journey had put her in mind ‘of my own Coach between Edinburgh & Stirling’ (Letters, 270).

  Postchaise: see ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 6; ‘Mr Clifford’, note to p. 36.

  93 sentimental: not recorded in Johnson’s Dictionary, this was a key term in the language of sensibility, indicating a feeling response that engages the emotions and the heart, rather than reason and the mind.

  Staymaker: a corset-maker; a ‘stay’ or corset is ‘A laced underbodice, stiffened by the insertion of strips of whale-bone (sometimes of metal or wood) worn … to give shape and support to the figure’ (OED).

  nine thousand Pounds … principal of it: this is a blatantly foolish way to behave; Bertha and Agatha could live quite comfortably on the interest of their combined fortune, without touching the capital or ‘principal’.

  common sitting Parlour: see ‘Edgar & Emma’, p. 26 and note.

  94 Silver Buckles: expensive fastenings for shoes, albeit not as expensive as this division of funds implies. £100 would have bought around thirty pa
irs of buckles.

  strolling Company of Players: a travelling group of actors, offering proverbially shabby and ill-rehearsed productions; often associated with vagrancy and infamy. See e.g. the Revd Vicesimus Knox, ‘The Imprudence of an Early Attachment to Acting Plays. In a Letter’, in Essays Moral and Literary, 2 vols. (1782), ii, essay 110.

  eclat: that is, éclat (French): ‘brilliance of effect’, ‘flamboyance’.

  preferment: ‘Advancement to a higher station’; ‘A place of honour or profit’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary).

  95 Covent Garden … Lewis & Quick: William Thomas Lewis (c.1746–1811) and John Quick (1748–1831), celebrated comic actors and managers at Covent Garden, one of the two main London theatres.

  paid the Debt of Nature: died—a clichéd euphemism.

  June 13th 1790: this is the earliest date given by JA in the juvenilia, although several writings in Volume the First clearly pre-date 1790. JA deleted the day ‘Sunday’, before the date, ‘June 13th’, though it was not a mistake.

  Lesley-Castle

  96 Henry Thomas Austen Esq re: Henry Austen (1771–1850), JA’s fourth brother, took his BA at Oxford in spring 1792. JA may have dedicated this tale to him in order to mark the occasion: the last letter in ‘Lesley-Castle’ is dated ‘13 April 1792’.

  I am now … Novels to you: B. C. Southam notes that the phrasing here is ambiguous. ‘Novels’ might refer to lost works by Henry, previously dedicated to JA; or JA could mean that she is only ‘now’ responding to Henry’s repeated request that she dedicate one of her own works to him (cf. ‘Sir William Mountague’, note to p. 34); or that she has already responded many times to such a request, and that other ‘Novels’ dedicated to Henry once existed (‘Jane Austen’s Juvenilia: The Question of Completeness’, Notes and Queries, new series, 11 (1964), 180–1).

  Messrs Demand & Co: Henry assumes the role of patron by signing this note, purportedly ordering his bank to pay the author 100 guineas (£105). Cf. JA’s reference to ‘patronage’ in her dedication to Charles Austen of ‘Mr Clifford’.

  Lesley Castle: on the name and setting of this tale, cf. JA’s letter to her niece Anna, remarking on the latter’s novel-in-progress: ‘I like the scene itself, the Miss Lesleys, Lady Anne, & the Music, very much.—Lesley is a noble name’ (Letters, 287).

  Matilda: see ‘Amelia Webster’, note to p. 41.

  97 Louisa: cf. Henry Tilney’s vaunted ‘knowledge of Julias and Louisas’ in NA (ch. 14), stock names in 18th-century fiction.

  stripling: ‘A youth, one just passing from boyhood to manhood’ (OED).

  Perth: the ancient Scottish county town of Perthshire, located between Edinburgh and Aberdeen; celebrated in JA’s lifetime for its picturesque beauty.

  bold projecting Rock: echoing various descriptions of isolated, rock-bound castles in Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). See e.g. sections on Slanes Castle and Dunvegan in A Journey to the Western Islands (36, 152). Boswell describes ‘the old castle’ of Rasay as ‘situated upon a rock very near the sea. The rock … does not appear to have mouldered’ ( Journal of a Tour, 197, Friday 10 Sept.). On Saturday 18 Sept. ( Johnson’s birthday), he records a comic argument with Lady McLeod about the many inconveniences of life in such a castle, concluding with his urging her to ‘keep to the rock: it is the very jewel of the estate’ (269–70). On 25 Nov. 1798, JA mentions that her father has bought a copy of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour (Letters, 22).

  retired from almost all the World: perhaps alluding to a leitmotif in Boswell’s Journal of a Tour, Johnson’s supposed retirement to a remote Scottish island. Like the Lesley sisters, who live near Perth and see a wide circle of people, Johnson’s fantastical visions of such retirement involved plenty of socializing. See e.g. his comments on Inch Keith ( Journal of a Tour, 52, 168).

  97 M’Leods … Macduffs: most of these are names JA would have encountered in Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: Macdonald, McLeod, and Mackinnon are listed in one sentence in the section on Skye (135); Shakespeare’s McDuff and Macbeth are discussed by Johnson when he visits places associated with the Scottish king (see ‘Fores Calder. Fort George’; ‘Inverness’). Cf. also references to Macbeth in ‘Love and Friendship’: ‘To say the truth this tragedy was not only the Best, but the only Play we ever performed’ (p. 94). Mr Macpherson appears in the section of Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands on ‘Ostig in Sky’. JA’s ‘M’Cartney’ probably derives from Burney’s Evelina, which includes a melancholy Scottish poet (resembling Young Werther) called Mr Macartney; he turns out to be the heroine’s half-brother.

  we work: see ‘The Mystery’, note to p. 50; ‘work’ here means sewing or mending.

  bon-mot: ‘A clever or witty saying; a witticism’ (OED) (French).

  repartée: ‘Smart reply’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary) (French).

  entirely insensible … dwell on myself: cf. ‘Love and Friendship’: ‘A sensibility too tremblingly alive to every affliction of my Freinds, my Acquaintance and particularly to every affliction of my own, was my only fault’ (p. 70).

  Rakehelly Dishonor Esq re [  footnote]: the second of two notes JA added to her teenage writings, transforming the abstract ‘dishonour’ into a second male accomplice for Louisa and thereby magnifying her turpitude. A ‘Rakehel’ is ‘A wild, worthless, dissolute, debauched, sorry fellow’; ‘rakehelly’ is ‘Wild; dissolute’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary) (cf. ‘Rake, rakehell, or rakeshame’ in Classical Dictionary). One of the dramatist George Farquhar’s favourite words, ‘rakehelly’ appears in e.g. Love and a Bottle. A Comedy (1699), act 3; The Inconstant: or, The Way to Win Him. A Comedy (1702), act 4; The Beaux’ Stratagem, act 1 (on which play, see also ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 18); The Twin-Rivals. A Comedy (1703), act 4; The Recruiting Officer, A Comedy ([1706]), act 1.

  98 these venerable Walls: novelistic cant. Cf. ‘These venerable walls, these gothic buildings, hollow groves, and awful tombs’ in a letter from Olivia Wilmot, in Anna Maria McKenzie’s The Gamesters (i, 49).

  I live in Perthshire, You in Sussex: that is, at more or less opposite ends of Great Britain. Perthshire is in the east midlands of Scotland, Sussex on the south coast of England.

  Tunbridge: Royal Tunbridge Wells, a spa town in Kent and smaller rival to Bath Spa (see note to p. 19); its popularity peaked under the patronage of Beau Nash, master of ceremonies from 1735 to 1762.

  Peggy: pet form of Margaret.

  Stewed Soup: stock made by simmering meat and bones in water; used for soup.

  99 as White as a Whipt syllabub: cf. Israel Pottinger, The Methodist, A Comedy ([1761]): ‘a Set of Teeth as white as whip’d Syllabub’ (act 1, scene 2). A syllabub is a light, cold, frothy dessert made by whisking or ‘whipping’ together milk or cream, sherry, lemon or orange, and sugar; a popular dish in JA’s day, as it was relatively cheap and easy to prepare.

  Eloisa: the only instance of this name in JA; it has appropriately romantic and tragic literary associations, primarily with the heroine of Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard (1717) and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s sentimental epistolary novel, Lettres de deux amans: habitans d’une petite ville au pied des Alpes (1761), popularly known as Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse.

  dressed: prepared for serving at the table.

  100 Decline: ‘Any disease in which the bodily strength gradually fails; esp. tubercular phthisis, consumption’ (OED). See ‘Edgar & Emma’, note to p. 24.

  Bristol: Bristol Hotwells, a resort on the outskirts of the port city of Bristol; cheaper and less fashionable than its neighbour Bath Spa. The last volume of Evelina is set there.

  101 those Jewels … always promised us: a mother’s jewels would traditionally be passed on to her daughter(s), but Margaret fears that Sir George has given them to his new wife.

  Mother-in-law: that is, stepmother. In Scoticisms, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, Designed to Correct Improprietie
s of Speech and Writing (1787), James Beattie notes that ‘Mother-in-law properly signals a husband’s or wife’s mother; in Scot. and in Eng. too it is often used improperly for step-mother’. The word does not appear elsewhere in the teenage writings, but in E Mrs Weston is described as Frank Churchill’s ‘mother-in-law’ rather than as his stepmother (ii, ch. 5).

  Matilda … Father’s table: Matilda, as the elder sister, would in the absence of her mother have sat at the head of the table; the new Mrs Lesley takes precedence.

  103 Dunbeath: a fishing village in the northern highlands of Scotland, though the immediate context suggests that this is the name of Lesley’s estate near Aberdeen.

  one of the Universities there: see Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands, in which he describes at length King’s College in Old Aberdeen and Marischal College in the new town, noting the points of difference and resemblance between them (‘Aberdeen’).

  I think and feel, a great deal: Sabor detects in JA’s emphases ‘a literary allusion’ ( Juvenilia, 448); Chapman thinks JA is echoing a note in Boswell’s Journal of a Tour on the Pretender (Minor Works, 460). The phrasing, however, seems more generally derivative of sentimental writing than of a specific source.

  healthy air … Bristol-downs: like Hotwells, the hills or ‘downs’ around Bristol were celebrated for their restorative properties.

  104 Chairwomen: charwomen, ‘hired … for odd work, or single days’ ( Johnson’s Dictionary), rather than those regularly employed as live-in servants.

  Jellies: leftover meats preserved in aspic or in clear, jellied stock.

  rouges a good deal: cf. ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, note to p. 5; ‘Jack & Alice’, note to p. 14. By the 1780s, rouging was becoming unfashionable.

  Brighthelmstone: Brighton, a popular seaside resort since the 1750s, patronized by the Prince of Wales. Lydia Bennet and Wickham elope to Brighton (P&P, ch. 39); Maria Bertram goes there for her honeymoon (MP, ch. 21).