4. Irish car: An unfashionable vehicle, generally used by those who could not afford more elegant modes of transport. The Wordsworths had had to use an Irish car for their tour to Scotland in 1803, and were evidently conscious of its eccentric appearance (see Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803, ed. Carol K. Walker (New Haven and London, 1997), Introduction).

CHAPTER VIII

1. relief from the parish: Since the sixteenth century, parishes had been required to levy rates from local inhabitants for the support of the poor, which took the form of both pensions and ad hoc payments.

CHAPTER IX

1. suddenly let it go: Bradbrook points out the parallel between this gesture and the scene in Burney’s Camilla, where Edgar Mandelbert receives some letters from Camilla (Bradbrook, pp. 100–101).

2. when lovely woman stoops: From Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wake-field, Ch. XXIV. For a similar sentiment, expressed less caustically, see Austen’s letter of 14 October 1813, on the death of Mrs Holder, ‘Poor woman, she had done the only thing in the World she could possibly do, to make one cease to abuse her’ (Letters, p. 238).

3. broad hems: Deep hems were a feature of formal mourning dress in the early nineteenth century.

4. Windsor: Town on the Thames, west of London. Its famous royal castle was greatly embellished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

5. arrow-root: Pure edible starch used as a thickening agent. A common ingredient of invalid cookery.

CHAPTER X

1. ‘the world is not their’s’: Compare Romeo and Juliet, V, i, 69–74:

famine is in thy cheeks,

Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,

Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back;

The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law:

The world affords no law to make thee rich;

Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Chapman suggests that Austen is quoting Johnson’s modification of these lines in his essay on the plight of friendless women, Rambler, 107 (Chapman, p. 493). See also note II, xvii: 1.

CHAPTER XI

1. development of self: Self-revelation.

2. he had been used to do …: I follow Chapman in changing to ‘he’ from ‘she’.

CHAPTER XII

1. in spite of all her faults: See note III, xiii: 1.

CHAPTER XIII

1. faultless in spite of all her faults: Bradbrook suggests an echo of Congreve’s The Way of the World, I, iii, ‘I like her with all her faults; nay, I like her for all her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her; and those affectations which in another woman would be odious, serve but to make her more agreeable’ (Bradbrook, p. 74).

CHAPTER XVI

1. ridicule: French alternative name for reticule, a small bag, usually with a drawstring. A further contemporary meaning was that of ‘a ridiculous or absurd thing’ (OED).

2.‘when a lady’s in the case’: From Gay’s Fables (1727). See the Introduction, pp. xxiv–xxv.

CHAPTER XVII

1. Madame de Genlis’ Adelaide and Theodore: Adele et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l’Éducation (3 vols, 1782) by the French novelist Caroline Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest, Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), was translated into English as Adelaide and Theodore in 1783.

2. N. takes M: Allusion to the Anglican service of matrimony, where the letter N stands for the names of the bride and groom. Emma plays phonetically on Knightley and Emma.

CHAPTER XVIII

1. a very simple story: Bradbrook suggests that Mr Knightley is alluding to Elizabeth Inchbald’s best-selling A Simple Story of 1791 (Bradbrook, p. 109).

2. Astley’s: The Royal Amphitheatre founded by the equestrian performer and circus manager Philip Astley (1742–1814). Austen may be recalling her own visit to Astley’s on 23 August 1796 (Letters, p. 5).

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