Belmour: A Modern Edition

Notes

✦ 321 ✦ Notes Chapter 1 6 Spa The name of a watering-place in the province of Liège, Belgium, celebrated for the curative properties of its mineral springs (OED). It was frequented by women wishing to become pregnant, or for those who were pregnant, to facilitate delivery. Anne Damer’s friend Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, visited the waters at Spa. 7 ton The fashion, the vogue, the mode; fashionable air or style (OED). Derville is a fop and his libertine attentions are themselves a form of fashion. 9 figurante Attractive mistress. 12 parterres Level spaces in a garden occupied by an ornamental arrangement of flowerbeds (OED). 12 jets d’eau Fountains. 14 covers The utensils laid for each person’s use at table; the plate, napkin, knife, spoon, etc. (Not in OED.) 15 dowdy A woman or girl shabbily or unattractively dressed, without smartness or brightness (OED). Chapter 2 19 novices A novice is a person who has entered a religious order and is under probation or trial before taking the required vows; a candidate for admission into a religious order; a probationer (OED). 20 freaks A sudden causeless change or turn of the mind; a capricious humor, notion, whim, or vagary (OED). 21 chaperon A person, especially a married or elderly woman, who, for the sake of propriety, accompanies a young unmarried lady in public, as guide and protector (OED). Chapter 3 24 whip Miss Not in OED; perhaps a woman who moves quickly, like a whip. ✦ 322 ✦ 25 curricle A light two-wheeled carriage, usually drawn by two horses abreast (OED). 25 Cumberland The name of the English county, now part of Cumbria (OED). 25 Major Heartley . . . loss of an arm Admiral Nelson certainly sat for Anne Damer in London in 1801, possibly as early as 1798 in Naples after defeating Napoleon, and this portrait of Major Heartley may owe something to their acquaintance. 27 surtout A man’s greatcoat or overcoat (OED). 27 made love Expressed admiration for; flirted with. 28 hanger-on A follower or dependent (OED). 28 led-captain A hanger-on, dependent, parasite (OED). 28 fatigues The extra-professional duties of a soldier, sometimes allotted to him as punishment for misdemeanor; an instance of this (OED). 28 frigates In the Royal Navy, formerly vessels of the class next in size and equipment to ships of the line, carrying from 28 to 60 guns on the main deck and a raised quarter-deck and forecastle. As subsequently used, the term no longer denoted a distinct class of vessels, being often applied to ships of much larger size than those that were so designated early in the nineteenth century. Since 1943, a naval escort vessel, a large corvette (OED). Chapter 4 32 jessamine A climbing or ascending shrub with fragrant white flowers, long naturalized in Southern Europe, and grown in England since the sixteenth century (OED). 32 pyracanthus Scarlet firethorn, Pyracantha coccinea (family Rosaceae ), a southern European thorny evergreen shrub bearing clusters of white flowers and persistent orange-red berries, often grown as an ornamental wall shrub (OED). 32 Flora In Latin mythology, the goddess of flowers; hence, in modern poetical language, the personification of nature’s power in producing flowers (OED). Here, also, an attractive woman. 33 finical Over-nice or particular, affectedly fastidious, excessively punctilious or precise, in speech, dress, manners, methods of work (OED). 33 possets, caudles, and conserves Medical remedies (not in OED). ✦ 323 ✦ 36 slurry To dirty, soil, smear, daub (OED). 43 tar A familiar appellation for a sailor: perhaps an abbreviation of “tarpaulin” (for example, Jack-Tar) (OED). 45 check-string A string by which the occupant of a carriage may signal to the driver to stop (OED). 54 black-friar A member of the order of Dominican friars, founded at the beginning of the thirteenth century by St. Dominic, so called from the color of their dress (OED). 54 domino A kind of loose cloak, apparently of Venetian origin, chiefly worn at masquerades, with a small mask covering the upper part of the face, by persons not personating a character (OED). Sometimes “domino” means the half-mask itself, and that seems to be the intention here, since the disguise is not complete (“merely in a domino”). 55 hackney-chair Formerly, a sedan chair, subsequently a bath chair or the like, plying publicly for hire (OED). 57 “Oh! mon Dieu! mon cher maître, qu’est-il donc...