The Eustace Diamonds (89 page)

2
.
Delph:
From the Dutch town Delft, famous for its glazed earthernware.

3
.
a good wife was a crown :
Proverbs 12:4: ‘A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.'

4
.
stuff:
Coarse material.

1
.
brougham:
Four-wheeled grand coach named after Lord Henry Brougham, a nineteenth-century politician.

1
.
Treadmill:
Topical. By the Prison Act of 1865 every male prisoner over 16, sentenced to hard labour, was obliged to spend time working on the treadmill.

2
.
his well-beloved:
Biblical allusion: ‘My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill' (Isaiah 5:1).

1
.
laches:
Negligence.

2
.
Sir Walter Scott
…
tell:
As ever Lizzie turns to romance for solace. Scott kept his identity as author of the ‘Waverley' novels secret for thirteen years.

1
.
fashionable evening paper:
The
Pall Mall Gazette
, founded by George Smith in 1865. Trollope was connected with the paper from its first number onwards – another little in-joke.

2
.
Deputy Shepherd:
Rev. Mr Stiggins in
Pickwick Papers
(1837): ‘a prim-faced, red-nosed man, with a long, thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake sort of eye — rather sharp, but decidedly bad' (
Ch. 27
).

1
.
in durance vile:
From Robert Burns's
Epistle from Esopus to Maria
(1794). The ‘durance' is a work house in which the hero is incarcerated.

1
.
the ostler
…
greases his oats:
See Beaumont and Fletcher's play
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
(1607), II. vi: ‘The third, a gentle squire, Ostlevo hight, / Who will our palfreys slick with wisps of straw, / And in the manger put them oats enough, / And never grease their teem with candle-snuff. ‘ The meaning here is ‘adulterate the fodder he gives his horse'.

2
.
Melton in the following November:
Melton Mowbray, at the beginning of the hunting season. The Leicestershire town boasted the best foxhunting
in the country. As regards other prey Trollope leaves it open at the end of
Phineas Redux
whether Lord George eventually marries Lizzie.

1
.
Wednesday:
Earlier in the chapter Mr Emilius asked permission to visit on Thursday.

2
.
taste of the Bible:
Emilius is rhapsodizing in the manner of the
Song of Solomon.
Lizzie has her oriental lover at last.

3
.
Juan and Haidee:
The great lovers from Byron's
Don juan
(1819—24).

1
.
horrors
…
go to Madame Tussaud:
In 1835 Madame Tussaud settled her touring waxwork exhibition in its present location in the Marylebone Road in London. Her 'separate room' (originally with blood-curdling scenes from the French Revolution) was labelled the ‘Chamber of Horrors' by
Punch
in 1846. The name has stuck.

2
.
They were princes once:
The Duke refers to the increasing secular and political control of the Church which is such a marked feature of the nineteenth century. It was a topic which had engaged Trollope in the Barsetshire series.

3
.
Botany Bay, or wherever they go now:
The sentence of transportation to Botany Bay was abolished in 1857, although some long-term convicts continued to be sent to western Australia. The last convict ship sailed in 1868.