Wives and Daughters (112 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Literary, #Fathers and daughters, #Classics, #Social Classes, #General & Literary Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #England, #Classic fiction (pre c 1945), #Young women, #Stepfamilies, #Children of physicians

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Eagerness; willingness (French).

See endnote 1 to chapter 17.

Improved technology of using tiles to drain marshy soil.

Fire; stop employing.

From
Lycidas
(1637). a poem by John Milton.

In London, church courts that handled civil legal business such as wills.

Tiny stinging darts sent by the miniature Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels
(1726).

Lord Bridgewater endowed a prize for essays connecting science and religion.

Allusion to the biblical account of the time Jacob waited and worked for Rachel (Genesis 29).

In such a serious vein (French).

In French, tapis is “carpet”; mettre sur le tapis means “to bring up for discussion.”

Those who are away are always wrong (French).

The eastern horn of Africa; site of exploration by Europeans in the 1830s.

Important classical writers on natural history.

Queen’s counsel.

Armed escorts to judges.

Annual painting exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Improved type of road surface common starting in the 1820s.

The Malvern Hills are located in the county of Worcestershire in England.

Half-year (French); term at school.

Literally, “always partridge” (French); that is, monotonous, always the same.

Inappropriate (French).

Literally, apropos of nothing (French idiom); akin to “out of the blue.”

Chimney sweep; a humble occupation.

Inconsistency; thoughtlessness (French).

Twilight.

Awkwardness; clumsiness (French).

Reference to Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605), with Lady Harriet as the knight and Miss Phoebe as the faithful squire.

Talk of the ass and you’ll see its ears (French idiom); akin to “speak of the devil.”

Well dressed; correct in detail (French).

Whipping boy, underdog (French); on the receiving end of annoyances.

The Cape of Good Hope; Roger has traveled the length of eastern Africa.

Language from the Bible, Genesis 27:34: “And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry...” (King James Version; henceforth, KJV).

Bread and milk (French) .

Allusion to the Bible, Job 14:14: “If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come” (KJV).

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Christabel (1816).

Happy medium (French).

A new railway line, actually opened in 1838.

Barristers, unlike solicitors, could represent clients in the high courts.

Gaius Marius (157-8 B.C.); Roman general turned politician.

Literally, “I do not know what”; that is, “something” (French).

Without heed to consequence (French).

“Crossing” was a frugal custom of writing the second “page” of a letter at a right angle to the first.

Allegorical figure of falsehood (the daughter of Deceit and Shame) in Edward Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590).

Suitor, admirer (French).