Pride and Prejudice (63 page)

1
.
placing a screen in the proper direction
: To shield her from the direct heat of the fire.

2
.
you must have been neglected
: This exchange between Elizabeth
and Lady Catherine alludes to a number of contentious issues in contemporary debates about female education. As befits her class, and in common with many contemporary commentators, Lady Catherine prefers a private education at home to boarding school (see note I, iv: 3) and is alarmed at the prospect of girls being allowed any degree of freedom. Her suggestion that their mother must have been a ‘slave’ to the Bennet girls’ education reflects on both women, however. Cf. J. L. Chirol,
An Enquiry into the Best System of Female Education; or, Boarding School and Home Education Attentively Considered
(1809): ‘What! is the most sacred duty – a duty imposed upon every mother by nature, religion, society, and private interest – a duty, on the strict performance of which depend the constitution, the temper, the disposition, the happiness of your daughters in this world, and in the world to come – a duty, the performance of which is attended with the most exquisite and permanent pleasure, – is this duty,
slavery?
’ (p. 157).

3
.
well placed out
: The position of governess, like that of paid companion, was one of very few jobs available for educated women who needed to support themselves, and it could be very difficult. Within a household, the governess was neither a member of the family nor, strictly, a servant, and she was often poorly paid. Chirol, for example (see previous note), makes a plea for proper remuneration and for the establishing of a seminary for training governesses. Cf.
Emma
, where Emma’s governess Miss Taylor (Mrs Weston) has been an important positive influence and a close friend but where Jane Fairfax dreads the prospect of becoming a governess.

4
.
cassino
: A card game in which the ten of diamonds (the great cassino) counts for two points and the two of spades (the little cassino) counts one; the aim is to score 11. (See also note I, vi: 4.)

1
.
gig
: An open two-wheeled carriage with a seat for the driver and one passenger and sometimes a groom’s seat behind.

2
.
commission of the peace
: Made up of magistrates (distinct from justices) appointed by special commission from among the rural landed gentry to keep the peace.

1
.
Ramsgate
: A fashionable seaside resort on the south coast of Kent.

1
.
Barouche box
: The barouche was a four-wheeled carriage with a collapsible top. The box was where the driver sat.

2
.
travelling post
: i.e., in the carriages that carried the mail, changing at designated stations
en route
.

1
.
the sentinel on guard
: Another sign of the military presence in southern England in response to the perceived threat of a French invasion.

2
.
Brighton
: A very fashionable move. Brighton was dominated for almost forty years, from 1783 until 1820, by the Prince Regent and his entourage. The reference to the military camp gives a flavour of the late eighteenth century, when the novel was first drafted: in 1793, 1794 and 1795 Brighton was the site of one of the largest militia camps on the south coast.

1
.
exposed herself
: Made an exhibition of herself. Cf. Fordyce,
Sermons to Young Women
(see note I, xiv: 5): ‘The beauty that obtrudes itself, how considerable soever, will either disgust, or at most excite but inferior desires…The retiring graces have been always the most attractive’ (Vol. I, p. 96).

2
.
peculiar
: In the now infrequent sense of ‘particular, individual’.

1
.
Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak
: All described in Gilpin’s
Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty
(see note II, iv: 1). In the ‘Biographical Notice of the Author’ prefacing the posthumous publication of
Northanger Abbey
and
Persuasion
in 1818, Jane Austen’s brother Henry records that ‘at a very early age she was enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque’. But the text here is more interested in personal histories (Mrs Gardiner’s home town and the visit to Pemberley) than in conventional tourist routes, giving the lie to Elizabeth’s earlier Romantic outburst in favour of ‘rocks and mountains’ rather than ‘men’ (II, iv). Gilpin describes Dovedale as ‘a calm, sequestered scene; and yet not wholly the haunt of solitude, and contemplation’ (Vol. II, p. 231).

2
.
a few petrified spars
: Specimens of fossilized wood.

3
.
teaching them, playing with them, and loving them
: Jane’s ‘sense and sweetness of temper’ make her an ideal practitioner of a liberal,
Rousseauistic, educational regime balancing learning, play and affection.

4
.
Oxford, Blenheim, etc
.: The Gardiners follow closely Gilpin’s route in
Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty
(see note II, xix: 1), except that from Birmingham he goes north through Manchester and Lancaster to the Lakes, returning via Chatsworth, Matlock and Dovedale.

5
.
great houses
: Far from being a modern phenomenon, tourist visits to ‘stately homes’ became popular in the eighteenth century, and guide books, illustrated with prints and giving details of the owners, were published. See, for example,
Seats of the Nobility and Gentry in Great Britain and Wales
, Engraved by W. Angus. From Pictures and Drawings by the most Eminent Artists (London, 1787).

1
.
abruptness
: Of landscape, ‘roughness, cragginess’ (Johnson).

2
.
so little counteracted by an awkward taste
: Critics have argued about whether Pemberley is meant to suggest Chatsworth, but it seems unlikely, since Chatsworth is listed separately as one of the places visited by the Gardiner party, and Gilpin’s description (see note II, xix: 1) of eighteenth-century Chatsworth is unenthusiastic: ‘Chatsworth was the glory of the last age, when trim parterres, and formal waterworks were in fashion…when we saw it, it’s invirons [
sic
] had not kept pace with the improvements of the times. Many of the old formalities remained’ (Vol. II, p. 220). After the construction of a water-garden at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the landscape gardening at Chatsworth was carried out largely in the mid-nineteenth century.

But the difference between Chatsworth’s formal gardens and the picturesque garden design, attentive to natural forms, which characterizes Pemberley raises questions more interesting than those of mere factual identification. In describing Pemberley Austen draws on a vast eighteenth-century tradition of moralized landscape design in which an appropriate balance of nature and art, beauty and use is the sign of a properly responsible moral outlook. Significant literary examples include Pope’s fourth
Moral Essay
, ‘Epistle to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington’ (1731), and Samuel Richardson’s description of Sir Charles’s taste in
Sir Charles Grandison
(1733–4): ‘he studies situation and convenience; and pretends not to level hills, or to force and distort
nature; but to help it, as he finds it, without letting art be seen in his works, where he can possibly avoid it’ (Part 2, Vol. III, Letter XXIII, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1986, pp. 160–61).

Cf.
Mansfield Park
, where Fanny is horrified by Mr Rushworth’s plans to ‘improve’ his estate, particularly to cut down an avenue of ancient oak trees, with no sensitivity to nature or history (chapter 6).

3
.
neither gaudy nor uselessly fine
: The taste with which the interior of Pemberley is decorated is in keeping with the grounds, and there might well be another contrast, besides that with Rosings, implicit here: Pemberley’s elegant family interior is very different from the dazzling display of European art treasures, collected by the fifth Duke of Devonshire, which could be seen at Chatsworth.

4
.
said Mrs Reynolds, pointing to another of the miniatures
: The name of Pemberley’s housekeeper, who paints such an important verbal portrait of Darcy, and who shows the family portraits to the visitors, is perhaps a jokey allusion to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great eighteenth-century portrait painter, whose
Discourses on Art
(1769–90) were extremely influential in the development of aesthetic theory and artistic taste.

5
.
gratitude
: Cf. pp. 253, 265. According to John Gregory (see note I, vi: 3), gratitude was the most likely basis of love for a woman: ‘What is commonly called love among you is rather gratitude, and a partiality to the man who prefers you to the rest of your sex;…this gratitude rises into a preference, and this preference perhaps at last advances to some degree of attachment, especially if it meets with crosses and difficulties…If attachment was not excited in your sex in this manner, there is not one of a million of you that could ever marry with any degree of Love’ (
A Father’s Legacy
, pp. 80–83).

1
.
curricle
: Like a gig, an open carriage with two wheels and a seat for the driver and one passenger.

1
.
grapes, nectarines, and peaches
: Luxuries which would be grown in greenhouses on the estate.

2
.
brown and coarse
: Pale complexions were most fashionable at this period.

1
.
an express
: ‘A messenger sent on purpose’ (Johnson).

2
.
to Scotland
: i.e., she has eloped to Gretna Green, the first town beyond the Scottish border. Marriage in Scotland was not subject to residence requirements as in England. (See also notes III, iv: 5 and III, xvii: 3.)

3
.
Clapham
: Then a village outside London to the south.

4
.
no such people had been seen to pass through
: Colonel Forster’s attempt to trace Wickham and Lydia through their use of public transport anticipates more extensive narrative uses of such detective tactics in, particularly, nineteenth-century novels. Chaises and hackney coaches could be privately hired, but both would use the ‘post’ stations (usually inns in towns or villages) where horses were changed.

5
.
married privately
: i.e., by securing a bishop’s licence. After ‘Hardwicke’s’ Marriage Act of 1753 marriages were valid only if performed with parental consent for those under the age of twenty-one, and by an ordained Anglican clergyman after the calling of banns or the purchase of a licence from a bishop or his surrogate. In both cases, at least one of the couple had to be resident for at least three weeks in the parish concerned. (See also note III, xvii: 3, and John R. Gillis,
For Better, For Worse
:
British Marriages, 1600 to the Present
, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 140–42.).

1
.
more economically, though less expeditiously
: See previous note.

2
.
terrific
: ‘Dreadful; causing terrour’ (Johnson).

3
.
the undeserving of the other sex
: Mary intones platitudes which might have come verbatim from any number of conduct books.

4
.
postilions
: A postilion was ‘one who guides a post chaise’ (Johnson).

1
.
duel
: The various characters’ reactions to Lydia’s elopement and seduction play off against versions of this very common narrative motif in fictional and moral writing. Mrs Bennet’s melodramatic concern that Mr Bennet might be killed in a duel is typically inappropriate – both in view of his character and given the fact that duels, though still practised, were frowned upon and associated primarily with the aristocracy. (Cf. note III, viii: 1.)

2
.
powdering gown
: A loose dressing-gown-like garment worn when the hair or wig was being powdered.

1
.
Monday, August 2
: There has been much controversy about the dating of this letter. In his edition of the novel, R. W. Chapman argues that the novel’s chronology is consistent with the calendars for 1811 and 1812, using this as evidence that Austen revised the novel at that period. According to his scheme, Austen confused the date of Mr Gardiner’s letter with that of Colonel Forster’s express to Longbourn, and this letter should have been dated 17 August (which was a Monday in 1812), consistent with Lydia’s claim to have stayed a fortnight at the Gardiners’ before her wedding. Other commentators have been less concerned to fit the novel absolutely with 1811–12, suggesting that the internal dates are a mixture of the original and the revised texts. (See Ralph Nash, ‘The Time Scheme for
Pride and Prejudice’, Modern Language Notes
4 (1966–7), pp. 194–8.)

2
.
distressed himself
: i.e., financially.

1
.
come upon the town…distant farm house
: A fall into prostitution (‘coming upon the town’) or retirement from society were standard popular fictional alternatives for a woman who had lost her virtue.