used as a sideboard.
7. men in green: Elves, spirits of nature.
8. character: A character reference.
9. eulogiums: Eulogies, flattering recommendations.
10. head and front of his offending: Othello confesses to Desdemona’s father: ‘true, I have married her: / The very head and front of my offending / Hath this extent, no more’ (Othello, I. iii. 79–81). The allusion is prescient of Mr Rochester’s own offence.
11. features … variance: The countenance, in the pseudo-science of physiognomy, referred to the whole face in its ethical and emotional configuration. Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801) recognized that the individual features may not ‘add up’ and the essential character be only ephemerally legible: ‘How often does it happen that the seat of character is so hidden, so enveloped, so masked, that it can only be caught in certain, and, perhaps, uncommon positions of the countenance, which will again be changed, and the signs all disappear, before they have made any durable impression’ (‘On The Nature of Man’, quoted in Jenny Bourne Taylor and Sally Shuttleworth, Embodied Selves, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 9).
12. ‘Do this,’ and it is done: The words of the centurion to Jesus in Matthew 8:9.
13. Approach the table: Bring the table nearer.
14. the pictures: These are in an idealizing, visionary style, such as Charlotte Bront? patronized in her earlier painting and attached to Angrian texts (see Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Bront?s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 58–9). She was given to copying the engravings in fashionable annuals and travel books. When invited by her editor W. S. Williams to emulate Thackeray by illustrating the third edition of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bront? declined, pleading lack of merit. She also pointed out that her personages ‘are mostly unattractive in look and therefore ill-adapted to figure in ideal portraits’ (11 March 1848, Letters, Vol. II, p. 41).
15. The first … The third: Charlotte Bront?’s pencil copy of Bewick’s engraving of a cormorant on a rocky island, executed in 1829, is reproduced in Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, The Art of the Bront?s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 160. However, the implied style of Jane’s first picture resembles the apocalyptic scenes of John Martin (1789–1854), the English Romantic painter. Jane’s first picture alludes to Milton’s sinister image of Satan ‘like a cormorant’ on the tree of life, ‘devising death/To them who lived’ (PL, Bk IV, ll. 196–8). The image of drowning recalls Cowper’s ‘The Castaway’, which is quoted in Shirley (Ch. XII). The second picture of Hesper-Vesper, the morning and evening star, resembles de Quincey’s narcotic vision of Our Lady of Tears: ‘Her eyes are sleepy and subtle, wild and sleepy by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds; oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head’ (Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings, ed. Barry Milligan, London: Penguin, 2003, p. 156). De Quincey’s figure alludes to mother-loss. The renewed suggestions of Bewick in the third picture recall Jane’s contemplation in Chapter I of the Arctic. The deathly, turbaned head recalls de Quincey’s opium nightmare of the Malay (ibid., pp. 80–3).
16. the likeness … shape had none: Refers to the personification of Death in Milton’s PL, Bk II, ll. 666, 672–3. Death is the companion, son and incestuous lover of Sin.
17. morning … noon: Echoes PL, Bk I, ll. 740–47, the fall of Mulciber (Vulcan).
18. Latmos: Mount Latmos was famous in classical mythology as the place where the moon-goddess Selene seduced Endymion in his sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
1. Ma bo?te: My box!
2. tiens-toi … comprends-tu: Keep quiet, child; do you understand?
3. ‘Oh ciel … beau’: Oh heavens! How lovely!
4. interlocutrice: Conversational companion (from the French).
5. lustre: Chandelier.
6. nonnette: Little nun.
7. pride in his port: Reminiscence of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Traveller (1764): ‘Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, / I see the lords of human kind pass by.’
8. et j’y tiens: And I insist on it.
9. bad eminence: Allusion to PL, Bk II, ll. 5–6 (‘Satan exalted sat, by merit raised / To that bad eminence’).
10. neophyte: Novice to a cult or religion.
11. paving hell: Plays on the proverb, ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’
12. Medes and Persians: In Esther 1:19, Ahasuerus divorces his wife Vashti for her disobedience, and causes this to be written ‘among the laws of the Persians and the Medes’: he takes Esther as his new bride.
13. ‘Il faut … même’: I’ve got to try it on! This very instant!
14. ‘Est-ce que … danser’: Does my dress suit me? … and my