1. Title page (p. 29) In Her Exalted Condition: referring to Richardson’s continuation of Pamela, Volumes HI and IV of the 1801 edition.
2. (p. 30) Anne Richardson: she had hoped that her sister, Martha Bridgen, would correct the manuscript of the revised Pamela, but Martha died in 1785 without having done so. Anne then planned to undertake the task herself, but it cannot be determined if she ever worked on the manuscript; nor is it known why she finally arranged for its publication in 1801 (see Eaves and Kimpel, ‘Richardson’s Revisions’, pp. 73–8).
3. (p. 31) Richardson’s preface, included in the first edition, was reprinted, with various revisions, in each of the subsequent editions. In a letter to Aaron Hill of 1741 he described it as ‘assuming and very impudent’, able to make its lofty claims because Richardson had ‘the umbrage of the editor’s character to screen [himself] behind’ (Selected Letters, ed. Carroll, p. 42). The version of 1801 follows the octavo text, but omits a postscript explaining why the introductory letters on the novel have been deleted and asserting that the work is based on a real life story.
4. (p. 33) The Contents had previously appeared only in the octavo edition. A brief preface explaining their purpose is omitted in 1801, and they are reduced to little more than half of their original length. In general, descriptions of characters’ motives and emotions are replaced by summaries of action; thus in Letter I, ‘She is all grateful Confusion upon it, and thinks him the best of Gentlemen’ (octavo) is altered to the terse ‘Sends them money’. The present edition follows the octavo in placing the Contents together; in 1801 they were printed at the beginning of each volume.
VOLUME I
5. (p. 43) cast accompts: reckon accounts.
6. (p. 43) mourning: costumes appropriate for mourning.
7. (p. 44) pill-boxes: shallow boxes, often made of cardboard, used for carrying pills or other small objects.
8. (p. 49) shifts, and six fine handkerchiefs: shifts were women’s undergarments, like chemises; handkerchiefs were neckwear, folded diagonally, draped around the neck and knotted in front in a breast knot.
9. (p. 50) cambric aprons, and four Holland ones: the aprons made of cambric, a fine French linen, would be worn as decorative additions to Pamela’s dress; the Holland aprons, made of a linen fabric from the province of Holland in the Netherlands, would be used as working aprons.
10. (p. 50) closet: ‘a small room of privacy and retirement’ (Johnson).
11. (p: 50) Flanders lazed head-clothes: head-dress, edged with lace from Flanders. The costliness of this material indicates Pamela’s special status; her clothing is more elegant than that of a typical servant.
12.(p. 50) silk shoes: silk was commonly used as a material for shoe uppers.
13. (p. 51) ribands and top-knots: ribbons and bunches of ribbon loops, usually brightly coloured, worn on the hair or in a lace cap.
14. (p. 51) stockings… stays: stockings reached above the knee, supported by garters; stays were corsets, laced behind and stiffened with whalebone.
15. (p. 52) As you say… was not so: an insertion in 1801 that confirms Pamela’s analysis of the situation, vindicating her judgement and countering charges by Richardson’s critics that she was at fault in her dealings with Mr B.
16. (p. 54) flowering him a waistcoat: embroidering with a floral design. The waistcoat was a long garment for men, reaching to just above the knee, and often heavily embroidered.
17. (p. 57) russet: dress made of coarse, homespun woollen cloth of a brownish colour; worn by working women.
18. (p. 58) toilet: dressing-table.
19. (p. 58) loft: an upper chamber, or a chamber in general.
20. (p. 60) silly: simple.
21. (p. 60) gypsey: ‘a name of slight reproach to a woman’ (Johnson); cunning, deceitful, fickle.
22. (p. 63) Angels and saints… defend me: Pamela has probably been reading Hamlet, and here misquotes Hamlet’s ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us’ (I. iv. 39).
23. (p. 63) Lucretia: the wife of the Roman Tarquinius Collatinus. Her ‘ravisher’ was Tarquinius Sextus; after the rape she stabbed herself, as Pamela threatens to do. For a servant-girl she is indeed ‘well read’, as Mr B. mockingly observes.
24. (p. 64) upon the floor: in the fifth and subsequent editions Pamela falls face down, probably in response to a complaint in the anonymous Pamela Censured (1741) that her supine position ‘must naturally excite Passions of Desire’ in the reader. In 1801, however, Richardson restored her to her original position, perhaps aware that ‘Passions of Desire’ could also be aroused by a view of Pamela from behind.
25. (p. 64) smelling-bottle: a small bottle containing smelling-salts or perfume; listed in OED only from 1771.
26. (p. 64) cut my laces: cutting the laces of tight-fitting corsets was a common and effective method of restoring women from faints.
27. (p. 64) chariot: a light, four-wheeled carriage, with only back seats.
28. (p. 72) coach: a large carriage, ‘distinguished from a chariot by having seats facing each other’ (Johnson).
29. (p. 73) If he can stoop… his own pride: inserted in 1801 to make Pamela’s moral purity more explicit; the author of Pamela Censured had objected that she seemed less afraid of being Mr B.’s mistress than of becoming a cast-off mistress. Mrs Jervis’s tearful admiration that follows is also an insertion in 1801.
30. (p. 75) Mrs Pamela: Mrs, when followed by the Christian name, was a more respectful term of address for young women than Miss.
31. (p. 75) foolatum: a humorously archaic term for ‘fool’.
32. (p. 75) Mrs Jervis is very desirous… for her care: in previous editions it was Pamela, not Mrs Jervis, who wanted the embroidery to be completed. The anonymous Lettre sur Pamela (1742) ridicules her pleasure in working on the waistcoat at a time when she should be leaving Mr B.’s household with all possible speed.
33. (p. 76) night-gown, silken petticoats: a night-gown was an informal gown, worn both indoors and out; petticoats were not undergarments but a prominent feature of women’s clothing, worn underneath an open overskirt.
34. (p. 76) laced: embroidered with lace.
35. (p. 76) linsey-woolsey: cheap textile material, woven from a mixture of wool and linen.
36. (p. 76) sad-coloured: sober, plain in colour.
37. (p. 76) robings and faceings: robings were trimmings in the form of bands or stripes on a woman’s robe; faceings were trimmings of any kind, used to cover one kind of material with another.
38. (p. 76) camblet quilted coat: a petticoat padded with camlet, a mixed fabric of silk and camel, or goat’s, hair. Quilted petticoats ‘began to be worn after 1710 (rare before) and reached their height of popularity in the 1740’s’ (Cunnington, p. 138).
39. (p. 76) under-coats… swan-skin; under-coats were worn to give added thickness to petticoats, and also for warmth, as Pamela observes; swan-skin was a closely woven flannel material.
40. (p. 76) Scots cloth: a cheap textile fabric.
41. (p. 77) round-eared caps: originally called coifs, they curved round the face to the ears. They became popular in the 1740s; this is the earliest example in OED.
42. (p. 77) hose… with white clocks: stockings with patterns, either knitted in or embroidered.
43. (p. 77) perquisite: casual emolument; ‘perk’.
44. (p. 77) I am forced… Mrs Jervis: a telling alteration in 1801, demonstrating Pamela’s self-possession. In previous editions she had broken off the letter on hearing footsteps, assuming that the intruder must be Mr B.; here she waits until she can identify the person as Mrs Jervis, relying on the evidence of her senses, rather than her imagination.
45. (p. 79) one-horse-chaise: a light carriage seating one to three persons, normally drawn, as here, by one horse.
46. (p. 79) wife and daughter: in previous editions Pamela, less conscious of propriety, does not mention Farmer Nichols’s wife and daughters; the chaise was merely a ‘cart’, and Pamela hoped that no one would see her on her journe
y.
47. (p. 80) wafers: discs used for sealing letters.
48. (p. 81) dickens: slang for devil.
49. (p. 81) out of the way: angry.
50. (p. 81) trow ?: do you think?
51. (p. 82) Mrs Arthur… Mrs Brooks, Miss Towers: changed from ‘Lady’ in previous editions, in response to Lady Bradshaigh’s comment on the ‘many mistakes… with regard to the Titles of several characters’; Richardson admitted his ‘Ignorance of Proprietys of those kinds’ (Eaves and Kimpel, ‘Richardson’s Revisions’, p. 81).
52. (p. 83) two reigns ago: during the reign of William III. In a preface to the first edition of Pamela II, Richardson dated the events of the novel 1717–30: the reigns of George I and George II.
53. (p. 83) passionate: ‘easily moved to anger’ (Johnson).
54. (p. 83) quality: people of good social position.
55. (p. 83) the poet… nobility: misquoting ‘Virtue alone is true Nobility’; the poet is George Stepney, ‘The Eighth Satire of Juvenal translated’ (1693), 1. 37.
56. (p. 84) out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh: Matthew, xii. 34; Jesus is admonishing the Pharisees, after asking them ‘how can ye, being evil, speak good things?’
57. (p. 85) some call her lady: as Richardson himself had done in previous editions; Pamela’s reference to ‘we simple bodies’ is a way of justifying the error.
58. (p. 87) tricked myself up: dressed up.
59. (p. 88) green knot: top-knot; see n. 13.
60. (p. 88) tucker: ‘a slip of fine Linnen or Muslin that used to run in a small kind of ruffle round the uppermost Verge of the Womens Stays, and by that means covered a great part of the Shoulders and Bosom’ (Guardian, no. 100).
61. (p. 89) tight: neat in appearance, shapely.
62. (p. 95) slip-shoed: in slippers.
63. (p. 95) morning gown: ‘a loose gown worn before one is fully dressed’ (Johnson); it resembled the modern dressing-gown.
64. (p. 95) coat: petticoat; see n. 33.
65. (p. 96) wrapper: a loose robe or gown.
66. (p. 99) O the difference between the minds of thy creatures: proverbial; cf. ‘O, the difference of man and man’ (King Lear, IV. ii. 26).
67. (p. 99) But the Divine Grace is not confined to space; proverbial; cf. ‘In space comes grace’.
68. (p. 100) birth-day suit: a suit fit to wear at court on a royal birthday.
69. (p. 100) stood on end with lace: was completely covered with lace; the lace was gold in editions prior to 1761, then silver, but here Mr B.’s taste is less extravagant.
70. (p. 102) with a witness: proverbial for ‘without a doubt’ (Tilley, W591.)
71. (p. 102) But do you think… a poor girl: one of several insertions in 1801 that exculpate Mr B.’s shortcomings; Pamela points out here that while he has been foolish in his dealings with her, such behaviour is unusual for him. In the previous paragraph one of Mr B.’s bawdy jokes, his desire to have Pamela ‘as quick another way, as thou art in thy Repartees!’ is omitted in 1801 for the same reason.
72. (p. 106) Ads-bobbers: God’s mockers. This and other words used by Longman which were already archaic in Richardson’s time indicate the steward’s rusticity.
73. (p. 106) well-a-day: alas.
74. (p. 107) elbow-chair: ‘a chair with arms to support the elbows’ (Johnson).
75. (p. 107) Ads-heartlikins: God’s little heart.
76. (p. 107) wainscot: wooden panelling, which was becoming fashionable in the first half of the eighteenth century.
77. (p. 108) cot: cottage.
78. (p. 108) plain-work: plain needlework or sewing.
79. (p. 108) grasshopper in the fable: Richardson printed his version of Sir Roger L’Estrange’s translation of Aesop’s Fables in November 1739, the same month in which he began writing Pamela. The grasshopper fable is number 164 in his edition, which he advertised in a note to this passage in the fifth edition of Pamela.
80. (p. 109) I have read of a good bishop: Pamela has probably been reading John Foxe‘s Book of Martyrs (1563), in which Thomas Bilney (who was not, however, a bishop) places his hand in a candle in preparation for his death by burning. Pamela (or Richardson) seems to have conflated this story with that of Bishop Bonner, who put not his own but Thomas Tomkins’s hand in a candle, to discourage him from maintaining his Protestant views.
81. (p. 109) blood-pudding: black pudding; a sausage made of blood and suet.
82. (p. 109) beechen trencher: platter made of beech wood.
83. (p. 109) city mouse and the country mouse: Aesop’s Fables, Richardson’s edition, no. 11. The country mouse, feasting at the house of her city sister, declares after their meal has been disrupted by some noisy servants, ‘I had much rather be nibbling of Crusts, without Fear or Hazard in my own Hole, than be Mistress of all the Delicates in the World, and subject to such terrifying Alarms and Dangers’.
84. (p. 109) betimes: early in the morning.
85. (p. 110) sash-door: door with a window in the upper part.
86. (p. 110) calimanco: glossy woollen material from Flanders.
87. (p. 110) burn: burnish; Pamela will polish the silver braid on her shoes, and sell it along with some old silver buckles.
88. (p. 112) hips and haws… pig-nuts: fruits of rose and hawthorn, and earth-nuts, a type of tuber.
89. (p. 113) fetch: trick.
90. (p. 121) Verses on my going away: Richardson revised this poem thoroughly for the 1801 edition; seven stanzas were deleted, four altered, three new ones added and only three left unchanged. The change of tone from pathos to dignified stoicism exemplifies Richardson’s changing attitude to his heroine.
91. (p. 123) beset: the most didactic part of Richardson’s editorial commentary is deleted at this point in 1801, making the disruption in the stream of letters less obtrusive.
92. (p. 129) vilely tricked: Richardson uses italics in this letter to indicate changes made by Pamela to the words dictated by Mr B.; see below, p. 155.
93. (p. 133) diet-bread: special bread for invalids, made from finely ground floor; not normally eaten by servants, it is another sign of Pamela’s special status.
94. (p. 133) Canary wine: light sweet wine from the Canary Islands.
95. (p. 133) Jehu-like: proverbial, alluding to II Kings, ix. 20: ‘The driving is like the driving of Jehu… for he driveth furiously.’
96. (p. 133) bait: feed.
97. (p. 135) cordial: ‘any medicine that increases strength’ (Johnson).
98. (p. 136) The regard: in previous editions the more amorous but less discreet Mr B. expressed ‘passion’ here for Pamela, and signed himself not ‘Your true Friend’ but ‘Your passionate Admirer’.
99. (p. 137) wife: the following passage, describing Pamela’s overnight stay at Fanner Monkton’s, is completely recast in 1801, and contains several pages of new material. Anne Richardson states in a letter to her sister Martha of 1784 that ‘the conversation at the farmer’s… was not an improvement, as the stile is different from the rest of the two first vols.’, but Eaves and Kimpel admire the ‘sharp characterization, realistic presentation of manners, and accurate reporting of conversation’ displayed here (‘Richardson’s Revisions’, pp. 81, 84). Pamela’s vigorous arguments and witty asides throughout this passage are somewhat incongruous with her dejection on entering the farmer’s house, but they are in keeping with Richardson’s bolder depiction of his heroine; her fleeting desire to have both Robert’s and Mr B.’s necks broken (p. 143) is a typically aggressive touch in 1801.
100. (p. 138) Farmer Monkton: Farmer Norton in previous editions; Richardson probably changed the name because he had also used it for Mrs Judith Norton, nurse of the heroine of Clarissa and a sympathetic character.
101. (p. 141) nerst: rustic dialect for next to, near.
102. (p. 141) other guess: different kind of.
103. (p. 145) prepossessed: already won over, prejudiced.
104. (p. 145) baffled: eluded, defea
ted.
105. (p. 145) ’Ifackins: in faith.
106. (p. 147) She calls me madam… to be insolent: the first of several insertions in 1801 in which Pamela exercises her powers of analysis in descriptions of Mrs Jewkes.
107. (p. 147) gambol… may-game: merrymaking; laughing-stock.
108. (p. 152) pursy: short-winded, puffy or fat.
109. (p. 154) an affair with Lady Davers: the ‘affair’ is Mr B.’s attempt to gain his sister Lady Davers’s approval of his interest in Pamela; the sentence is inserted in 1801 to explain Mr B.’s delay in making a proposal of marriage to Pamela.
110. (p. 157) hoods, and a velvet scarf: hoods could either be attached to cloaks or, as here, were separate; they were large enough to cover caps worn underneath and completely covered the head. A scarf was a large wrap enveloping the body.
111. (p. 159) turfted: covered with turf.
112. (p. 159) Argus: Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing, was less fortunate than Mrs Jewkes, however; set by Juno to guard Io from the attentions of Zeus, he was killed by Hermes and his one hundred eyes were placed by Juno on the peacock’s tail.
113. (p. 161) hussey: abbreviation for ‘housewife’, a case for needles and thread.
114. (p. 162) din their ears: repeat ad nauseam.
115. (p. 163) stand shill-I, shall-I: remain irresolute or undecided.
116. (p. 163) Jezebel: the infamous wife of Ahab, King of Israel (I Kings, xvi. 31 ff.); hence a wicked, abandoned woman.
117. (p. 163) Marry come up: interjection expressing indignant surprise or contempt.
118. (p. 164) mal-pertness: impudence.
119. (p. 164) settle-bench: a long wooden bench, usually with arms and a high back that extended to the ground, with a locker or box under the bench.
120. (p. 166) post-house: post-office.
121. (p. 166) can: cup.
122. (p. 168) horse-beans: beans used as food for horses and cattle, or made into bean-meal and used for coarse bread.
123. (p. 168) five ells: 18¾ feet; an ell is 45 inches.
124. (p. 171) True friend… alarming danger: Pamela’s analysis of Mr B.’s letter is inserted in 1801. It is one of several passages in which she demonstrates her ability to see through a specious argument, while displaying her own high moral standards.