Pride and Prejudice (62 page)

6
.
Cheapside
: In the City of London and therefore unfashionable and associated with trade. The implicit contrast is with the new residential areas around Oxford Street.

7
.
sat with her till summoned to coffee
: I.e., when the men have left the dining-room to join the ladies.

8
.
loo
: A card game rather like whist, but various numbers can play and not all the cards are dealt. The ‘loo’ is the sum forfeited by any player who fails to win a trick. (See also note I, vi: 4.)

9
.
paint tables, cover skreens and net purses
: Typical decorative (and, by implication, trivial and useless) feminine ‘accomplishments’. Cf. the Bertram sisters in
Mansfield Park
, whose pastimes include ‘making artificial flowers or wasting gold paper’ (chapter 2).

10
.
comprehend
: In the sense of Johnson’s first definition: ‘to comprise; to include; to contain; to imply’.

11
.
a woman must have a thorough knowledge of…to deserve the word
: This whole discussion is very obviously central to the novel’s
recurrent interest in the form and content of female education. (See also notes I, ii: 4; I, iv: 3; I, ix: 1; II, vi: 2.)

12
.
physicians
: Professional medical practitioners, as opposed to local apothecaries. (See note I, vii: 12.)

1
.
brought up differently
: Mrs Bennet’s social aspirations are abundantly clear in her suggestion that her daughters have been educated in the expectation of a leisured existence. Anxieties about inappropriately educated girls, unable to fend for themselves, abound in advice and educational literature of the period. See, for example, Clara Reeve in
Plans of Education
(1792): ‘What numbers of young ladies…are turned into the world to seek their fortunes; boasting of their good education, ignorant of everything useful, disdaining to match with their equals, aspiring to their superiors, with little or no fortune, unable or unwilling to work for themselves’ (pp. 61–2).

2
.
the
food
of love
: Cf. Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night
, Act I, sc. 1: ‘If music be the food of love, play on,/Give me excess of it…’

1
.
piquet
: A complicated card game played by two people, using thirty-two cards. (See also note I, vi: 4.)

2
.
reel
: A lively dance, associated with Scotland and sometimes Ireland, usually danced by two couples facing each other and describing a series of figures of eight.

3
.
the picturesque would be spoilt
: Elizabeth refers jokingly to the contemporary cult of the picturesque, a fashion in both landscape appreciation and garden design which emphasized a painterly aesthetic – ‘natural’, asymmetrical lines rather than classical symmetry – and which took particular pleasure in, for example, ivy-clad ruins. It is particularly associated with the travel writings of William Gilpin (see notes II, iv: 1 and II, xix: 1). The allusion here is to Gilpin’s
Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty
…
particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmorland
(1786), where, in his comments on the prints included in the book, he explains picturesque principles through his ‘doctrine of grouping
larger cattle
’: ‘
Two
will hardly combine…But with
three
, you are almost sure of a good group…
Four
introduce a new difficulty in grouping…The only way in which they will group well, is to
unite three
…and to
remove the fourth
’ (‘Explanation of the Prints’, Vol. II, pp. xii–xiii).

1
.
white soup
: Made from meat stock, egg yolks, ground almonds and cream, and served strengthened with negus (hot sweetened wine and water) as a warming and intoxicating refreshment at balls.

1
.
thorough bass
: A bass line with figures indicating the harmonies which the player must realize by improvisation in the upper part. The term came also to mean the study of harmony in general.

1
.
entailed away from your own children
: See note I, vii: 1.

2
.
preferred
: To be granted a parish of ‘living’ (see note I, xv: 2).

3
.
demean
: Austen plays, perhaps, with the two possible meanings recorded by Johnson: ‘1. to behave; to carry one’s self. 2. to lessen; to debase; to undervalue’.

4
.
se’night
: Also ‘se’nnight’. Johnson: ‘the space of seven days and nights; a week’.

1
.
aspect
: In the sense of Johnson’s second definition: ‘Countenance; look’.

2
.
quadrille
: Card game played by four people with a pack of forty cards. Quadrille is a variation of ombre, which Belinda plays with the Baron in Alexander Pope’s
The Rape of the Lock
, and gave way in turn to whist. (See also note I, vi: 4.)

3
.
phaeton
: A four-wheeled open carriage with an elevated seat for the driver and one passenger.

4
.
presented
: To the king and so to the highest society. Mrs Bennet will be working from the Court List rather than personal knowledge.

5
.
Fordyce’s Sermons
: James Fordyce’s
Sermons to Young Women
, first published in 1766, was a popular conduct book, frequently reprinted between 1790 and 1810. Like Mr Collins, Fordyce is particularly vehement about the majority of novels: ‘there seem to be very few, in the style of Novel, that you can read with safety, and yet fewer that you can read with advantage. – What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful, in their tendency so pestiferous, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue, such horrible violation of all decorum, that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute, let her reputation in life be what it will. But can it be true –
say, ye chaste stars, that with innumerable eyes inspect the midnight behaviour of mortals – can it be true, that any young woman, pretending to decency, should endure for a moment to look on this infernal brood of futility and lewdness?’ (3rd edition 1766, Vol. I, pp. 148–9). Mary Wollstonecraft attacks Fordyce’s Sermons in
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
.

1
.
belonged to one of the universities
…
necessary terms
: It was virtually impossible to be ordained without a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge but increasingly difficult to gain admission to the universities as the practice of giving free board and lodging to poor scholars was becoming less common. Once admitted, getting a degree demanded little more than fulfilling residence requirements, and many young men used university mainly as an opportunity to make useful contacts.

2
.
living
: The benefice, or position and property, of a Church of England clergyman. At the end of the eighteenth century there were 11,600 benefices in England and Wales, over half of which were in the gift of private landowners or the Crown. Livings were often secured through family relationships, and the Church was a useful career (rather than a vocation) for well-born younger sons – as Austen was well aware: her father and two of her brothers were clergymen. A living meant a house and an annual income derived from tithes (see note I, xviii: 1), or from the glebe land belonging to the church, which could vary from £100 to nearer £1,000 a year. Many clergymen held more than one living, and the clergy increasingly acted as a rural managerial class for the landed gentry. The wealthier ones were themselves typical members of the ‘pseudo-gentry’ (see General Note 1, above).

3
.
one of the largest folios in the collection
: A folio is a book printed on large-size paper and therefore expensive.

4
.
a really new muslin
: A fairly new fabric at the time, a product of Britain’s rule in India, muslin was finely woven cotton, came in a variety of textures and patterns and washed well. The end of the eighteenth century saw a shift from stiff and richly coloured silks to light, thin cottons and linens in white or pale colours and to simple, high-waisted dresses inspired by the draperies of classical statues. The muslin in question would be a length of cloth bought to be made up.

5
.
commission
: As an officer. We learn in I, xv that he is a lieutenant, a subaltern officer ranking next below a captain.

6
.
lottery tickets
: ‘A round game at cards, in which prizes are obtained by the holders of certain cards’ (
OED
). (See also note I, vi: 4.)

1
.
chimney-piece
: £800 was a fabulous price for a chimney-piece. It must have been commissioned from the great chimney-piece maker Carter, whose clients included the Adam brothers.

2
.
their own indifferent imitations of china
: Decorative feminine accomplishments included painting plain crockery with imitations of the designs on fine china.

1
.
Interested
: In the sense of
OED
definition 2: ‘influenced by considerations of personal advantage; moved by self-interest’.

2
.
shrubbery
: An increasingly popular feature of garden design, shrubberies provided different walks on gravel paths and allowed privacy while still close to the social world of the house. In
Mansfield Park
, Fanny praises a new shrubbery as combining utility and ornament (chapter 22). (See also note III, i: 2.)

3
.
venturing to dance
: Though he is sanctimonious, Mr Collins is not of the strict Evangelical persuasion which became increasingly influential within the Church in the early nineteenth century and which would have frowned on dancing and card-playing.

4
.
shoe-roses
: Decorations for dancing shoes.

1
.
tythes
: Also spelt ‘tithes’ – a tenth of the gross income from all cultivated land within a parish, to which clergymen were entitled. By the early nineteenth century the negotiation of tithes with landowners and tenant farmers could be a complex and time-consuming business.

2
.
settlements
: Legal agreements granting money or property. Here, arrangements for a wife’s dowry and personal income.

1
.
one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents
.: The ‘four per cents’ were government funds yielding interest which provided an annual disposable income – in this case of very modest proportions. See Edward Copeland, ‘What is a Competence? Jane Austen, Her Sister Novelists, and the 5%s’,
Modern Language Studies
9:3 (1979), 161–8.

2
.
economy
: In the sense of Johnson’s first definition: ‘the management of a family; the government of a household’.

3
.
rational creature
: Cf. Mary Wollstonecraft in
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792): ‘My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their
fascinating
graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone’ (ed. Miriam Brody, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996, p. 81).

1
.
hot pressed paper
: Fine, expensive writing paper which had gone through the extra production process of hot pressing to make it smooth.

2
.
Grosvenor street
: Just south of Oxford Street, in the fashionable residential area of London.

3
.
two full courses
: Dinner could be a very elaborate meal. A full course involved not just the main dish but also a large number of ‘removes’ – i.e., dishes which were changed while the rest of the course remained.

1
.
coming out
: A young girl’s official entry into society and, therefore, marriageability.

1
.
Gracechurch Street
: In the City of London, the commercial area about two miles east of the fashionable residential area where the Hursts live.

1
.
the Lakes
: The Lake District in the north-west of England, already a popular tourist destination by the late eighteenth century, and the subject of many picturesque travel guides, most famously William Gilpin’s
Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, on several parts of England; particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmoreland
(1786). (See notes I, x: 3 and II, xix: 1.)

2
.
transport
: In the sense of Johnson’s third definition: ‘rapture; ecstasy’. Elizabeth’s outburst in favour of nature rather than humanity is, perhaps, a relic of
First Impressions
, which might have been a more explicitly satirical novel along the lines of
Northanger Abbey
.