Jane Austen's Writings -- Love and Freindship -- Notes and Character List

Notes to "Love and Freindship"

Later on, Jane Austen also used "love and friendship" (something of a stock phrase in the literature of the time) to good effect in Chapter 4 of her novel Northanger Abbey (in the remark "Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love", which is rather amusing in its context).

Sensibility:

Sensitivity, susceptibility to feelings, emotionalism, sentimentalism. Jane Austen mocks the literary enthusiasm for sensibility in Love and Freindship, and in Sense and Sensibility criticized its usefulness as a guide by which to conduct one's life. On the other hand, when Henry Tilney shows "the embarrassment of real sensibility" in the next-to-last chapter of Northanger Abbey, it means that he feels properly ashamed of his father's disgraceful conduct.

"Natural":

Here the meaning is "illegitimate".

Minuet de la Cour:

A dance.

"Bedfordshire... Middlesex... Wales":

Bedfordshire and Middlesex (London) are about thirty miles apart in central south England, while the vale of Usk (in south Wales) is about a hundred and twenty miles away (as can be seen on the

map).
Gilpin, whose book on the highlands is referred to later on in Love and Freindship, also wrote on the picturesque beauty of South Wales, in a book first published in 1782 (and reprinted in 1789, one year before the writing of Love and Freindship).

"We were... united by my Father, who... had never taken orders"

This of course means that the marriage is legally invalid.

Victuals:

Food.

Of course, they're absconding with Sir Edward's carriage.

Escritoire:

A writing-desk.

Execution:

"The enforcement by the sheriff, or other officer, of the judgment of the court; ``the obtaining of actual possession of anything acquired by judgement of law''; chiefly the seizure of the goods or person of a debtor in default of payment" -- OED.

Newgate:

A London prison.

"Too long a Journey for the Horses":

Scotland is three hundred miles from London.

Peer:

Nobleman.

The Sorrows of Werter:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (also in epistolary form, by the way) was first published (in German) in 1774. Goethe himself described it as the story of a young man "gifted with deep, pure sentiment and penetrating intelligence, who loses himself in fantastic dreams and undermines himself with speculative thought until finally, torn by hopeless passions, especially by infinite love, he shoots himself in the head".
William Makepeace Thackeray was moved to write the following poem on the book:

The Sorrows of Werther (1853)

Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the worth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out
And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person
Went on cutting bread and butter.

"Precipitation"

This almost certainly means "hastily" (even though Gilbert and Gubar gloss it as "tears" -- The Norton anthology of Literature by Women, p.222).

"Eastern Zephyr":

In classical mythology, "Zephyr" is the West wind.

"The life of Cardinal Wolsey"

Thomas Wolsey (ca. 1475-1530), who was born the son of a butcher, became influential (and very wealthy) in the church, and as an advisor to King Henry VIII, but lost favour when he couldn't arrange for the Pope to give Henry a divorce from his first wife; he died under arrest for treason (as dramatized in Shakespeare's King Henry VIII, which is also mentioned by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park).

"Field of action":

This is military terminology.

"Cupid's Thunderbolts, the piercing Shafts of Jupiter":

Of course, in Classical mythology it is Cupid who has the arrows and Jupiter (Zeus) the thunderbolt. Jane Austen never refers seriously to Classical literature (which was part of boys' education, but not usually of girls').

Basket

A compartment hanging off the rear of the stagecoach; not the highest-class way to travel.
In this picture of a coach (?) and six <JPEG> (Rowlandson, 1798), the "basket" can be seen behind (and the "box" in front).

Gilpin's Tour to the Highlands:

William Gilpin's Observations on several parts of Great Britain, particularly the High-lands of Scotland, relative chiefly to picturesque beauty, made in the year 1776; this was first published in 1789 (one year before the writing of Love and Freindship). Jane Austen later mocked the cult of the picturesque in her novel Sense and Sensibility.

Driving:

Of horses.

"Sterling":

Stirling is 30 miles to the east-northeast of Edinburgh (on the east coast of Scotland).

Staymaker:

A maker of corsets.

"Lived upon the principal"

I.e. they spent more than the yearly interest.

Silver Buckles

In Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play A Trip to Scarborough (1777), the following dialogue occurs:

Jeweller.: "I hope, my lord, these buckles have had the unspeakable satisfaction of being honoured with your lordship's approbation?"
Lord Foppington.: "Why, they are of a pretty fancy; but don't you think them rather of the smallest?"
Jeweller.: "My lord, they could not well be larger, to keep on your lordship's shoe."
Lord Foppington.: "My good sir, you forget that these matters are not as they used to be; formerly, indeed, the buckle was a sort of machine, intended to keep on the shoe; but the case is now quite reversed, and the shoe is of no earthly use, but to keep on the buckle."

Heir:

Sir Edward hopes for a son, since his daughter (Augusta) cannot inherit his hereditary title of Baronet (women were allowed to inherit titles only in certain cases, usually subject to the strange laws of "abeyance").

Covent Garden:

In London.

"Lewis [Lewes] and Quick":

Well-known London actors, who acted in the first productions of Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan's The Rivals, and at whose expense Jane Austen is amusing herself (see Tucker, p.93).

Baronet:

The lowest hereditary title in Britain (below the real nobility of Barons, Viscounts, Earls, etc., who are called "Lord" rather than "Sir", but above knights such as Sir William Lucas). Jane Austen never went higher in the social scale than Baronets for the main characters in her novels (both Mansfield Park and Persuasion have baronet characters). In a letter of September 8th 1816, Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra "Sir Thomas Miller is dead. I treat you with a dead Baronet in almost every Letter".