Selections from Eliza Leslie

Notes

285 Notes The Travelling Tin-Man 1. Common name for The Society of Friends, a religious sect whose members were known for distinguishing themselves by plain speech and attire, as well as pacifism. 2. Prior to marriage, Quaker couples were to be approved by the Meeting , or congregation, with which they were affiliated. 3. A dried-out, hollow gourd often used as a container. Mrs. Washington Potts 1. Mrs. Goodfellow was the proprietor of a Philadelphia cooking school that Leslie attended. 2. Pearl ash is a leavening agent obtained by leaching ashes of wood or other plants. 3. Most likely a fictional name. 4. Note in original: “Thick sour milk.” 5. Arrangement of the centre-table was such an important domestic art that Leslie wrote a short story dedicated to the subject (“The CentreTable ”). 6. contre-temps: French, an awkward or difficult situation or mishap. 7. A hat with a narrow, sometimes turned-up brim, a full crown, and usually a plume, worn by men and women, especially in sixteenth-century France. 8. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”: old English proverb, made even more famous in America through its appearance in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1735. 9. Drusa is explaining that a jar of quinces, supposedly preserved with sugar, unfortunately has begun to ferment. 286 Notes to Pages 35–69 10. Vivian Gray is an 1827 novel by Benjamin Disraeli. 11. A Revolutionary War hero, the French Marquis de Lafayette visited the United States to much fanfare in 1824 and 1825. 12. Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) was a prominent Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. 13. Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was a Flemish Baroque painter known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and scenes with mythological and allegorical subjects. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) was known especially for his portraits and leadership of the Royal Academy, to which Eliza Leslie’s brother Charles Robert was later inducted. 14. Benjamin West (1738–1820), an American painter well known for works depicting the Revolutionary War, was also celebrated in England as a member and president of the Royal Academy in London. Note in original: “The author takes this occasion to remark that the illustrious artist to whom so many of his countrymen erroneously give the title of Sir Benjamin West, never in reality had the compliment of knighthood conferred on him. He lived and died Mr. West, as is well known to all who have any acquaintance with pictures and painters.” 15. Travel literature describing life in North America was quite popular in England and France. See, for example, Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832). Leslie was believed to be a European writer, due to her acerbic comments about Americans. See “Our Contributors ,” Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, January 1846, 1. 16. From Thomas Gray (1716–1771), “The Descent of Odin: An Ode,” lines 39–40. 17. comme il faut: French, literally, “as it’s done”; proper. 18. The United States Hotel was the prominent Philadelphia hotel in which Eliza Leslie lived during the last decade of her life. 19. ci-devant: French, of former times. 20. soi-disant: French, self-proclaimed. The Settlers 1. Most likely a reference either to the character Chevalier Pirouette, performed by actor John Reeve in the popular drama Henriette the Forsaken by John Baldwin Buckstone or to a comedic character enacted by Buckstone prior to the publication of the play in 1834. Buckstone 287 Notes to Pages 75–113 performed regularly, and the drama ran successfully at the Adelphi Theater in London. Pirouette is the French term for a whirl and a specific movement in ballet. 2. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one type of girdle used in the nineteenth century was a large, heavy circular plate of iron used for cooking, also known as a griddle. 3. See chapter 2, note 14. Eliza Farnham, or The Love Letters 1. Alexander Pope (1688–1744), “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717), line 51. 2. Hannah More (1745–1843), Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies (1777). 3. The periodical The Rambler (1750–52) was published by Samuel Johnson and included literature, essays on morality, society, politics, and religion. 4. Swiss philosopher and physician Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728– 1795). His essays translated from the German, including On Solitude, were popular in Europe and America. 5...