The Mysteries of Udolpho (122 page)

2.
saloon
: A lofty, spacious room used for assemblies in public places. Also the principal room in a house in terms of size. Radcliffe uses it to designate a large and resplendent salon in a private home.

1.
Collins [‘The Manners. An Ode']
: ll. 10–12.

2.
the straight walks, square parterres, and artificial fountains of the garden
: In opposition to the geometric style of laying out grounds in regular levels and plots bounded by artificial straight lines, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century landscaping moved increasingly to the so-called ‘English' landscape style. Largely influenced by William Gilpin's theory of the picturesque, this style, which sought to imitate nature in a painterly way, obviously appealed to Radcliffe. One of its leading exponents, the professional landscape gardener Humphry Repton, from 1788 onwards advocated formal layouts near his clients' houses only on utilitarian grounds. By the early 1790s formal, ‘shaven' gardens and ‘prim' walks were the target of polemic from wealthy Whig landowners Richard Payne Knight and Sir Uvedale Price. Both enthusiastic amateur gardeners on their own Herefordshire estates, they advocated irregularity and variety in tree planting, and subsequently (in 1794) published works on landscaping in the picturesque style along with Repton. According to their Gilpinesque criteria, Madame Cheron's garden would reveal her as a person of ‘pretended taste', which is how she is depicted by Radcliffe. On the other hand, St Aubert's garden at La Valleée, with its ‘negligent beauties' so beloved by Emily, is one of which they would approve.

3.
toilet
: dressing room, with echoes in the satirical phrase ‘the throne of her homage', which follows, of Pope's
The Rape of the Lock
(1712), I. 121–39.

4.
cotillons
: Country-style dances for six or eight. They originated in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

1.
[Thomson] Castle of Indolence
: I.xxx.

2.
the latter
: Valancourt.

3.
whole countries extend between the regions… exist!
: Languedoc, for example, was French, but Roussillon belonged to Spain, as did Lombardy (Milan), while Venice was an independent state. How borders between countries were demarcated is now not easy to ascertain. Local inhabitants knew who was in control and to whom their taxes were due. Travellers who used Charles Estienne's guide (
La Guide des chemins de France
, 1552) found stones engraved with coats of arms in place at boundaries between provinces. In the eighteenth century it was common practice for members of the British aristocracy
and gentry, particularly young males with their tutors, to make the Grand Tour of Europe, reaching Venice and ultimately Rome via the Alps, and remaining on the Continent for a lengthy period, from months up to two or three years. In various comments, such as the one in Chapter III, about ‘a want of convenient inns' in the Pyrenees, Radcliffe is obviously drawing on travellers' experiences. For details about travelling at this time, see Antoni Maczak,
Travel in Early Modern Europe
, pp. 24–6, 111–12.

1.
Goldsmith [The Traveller]
: ll. 7–8.

2.
Mount Cenis
: Massif and pass over the French Alps to Italy – an invasion route from earliest times.

3.
Hannibal's passage over the Alps… St Bernard
: Hannibal (247–183 BC) was the greatest general of the city of Carthage (now Tunis) on the north coast of Africa. Carthage was engaged in a series of wars with Rome from the middle of the third century to the middle of the second century BC. Early in the second of these Punic Wars, Hannibal, with 60,000 men and a few elephants, took the enemy Roman army by surprise using the daring strategy of crossing the Pyrenees, France and the Alps and entering Italy, perhaps via the Mount Cenis pass. Many Carthaginians were killed in the Alps by snow, cold and fierce mountain tribes – a scene depicted in J. M. W. Turner's
Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps
(1810–12), which reputedly was prompted by Radcliffe's painterly description. However, Turner's whirling vortex-like snowstorm makes everything indistinct. The sublime infinitude of the ‘tremendous cliffs' which so astonishes Emily, prompting her vision of the army, is perhaps better captured in John Martin's very romantic oil
The Bard
(1817). Although Hannibal is not its professed subject, this painting depicts a huge army ‘winding among the defiles' of a vast alpine terrain. For a discussion of the figuring of Hannibal in travel literature, including the comment of Thomas Gray which seems to have inspired Radcliffe, see Chloe Chard,
Pleasure and Guilt on the Grand Tour: Travel Writing and Imaginative Geography
(Manchester and York: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 193–5. For Gray's comment on Hannibal's passage through the Alps as a fit subject for the painter Salvator Rosa (‘Hannibal passing the Alps; mountaineers rolling down rocks upon his army; elephants tumbling down the precipices') see
The Poems of Mr Gray, to Which are Prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings
, ed. William Mason (London, printed by A. Ward, and sold by J. Dodsley and J. Todd, York: 1775), p. 305.

4.
conversazioni
: Conversations; parties for the purpose of elegant and witty talk. In a letter to his mother from Florence on 19 March 1740, Thomas Gray wrote that the evenings of a Florentine Lent, after a day of ‘fish and meagre diet', were composed of ‘what is called a Conversazione, a sort of assembly at the principal people's houses, full of I cannot tell what'. See
The Works of Thomas Gray
, Vol. II, ed. John Mitford (London: Bell and Daldy, 1858), pp. 92–3.

5.
the Carnival at Venice
: Carnevale Venuto, a period of revelry and merrymaking, began on Quinquagesima Sunday and ended on Shrove Tuesday (that is, in the week before Lent). Radcliffe's descriptions are of eighteenth-century Venice, which spent its wealth on pageants, concerts and
il Carnevale
, which lasted for six months every year.

1.
[Shakespeare] Midsummer Night's Dream
: II.i.140–41.

2.
the convulsed state of their country
: See note 4 to Vol. I, Ch. II.

3.
the Brenta
: An Italian river, north of Venice, which flows into the Adriatic sea.

4.
the palaces of Sansovino and Palladio
: The Renaissance architects Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570) and Andrea Palladio (1508–80) designed several of the beautiful public buildings in Venice, but not ‘palaces' (palazzos or
palazzi
) there. Radcliffe follows Mrs Hester Thrale Piozzi, who, in her
Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany
(London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1789), had mistakenly asserted that ‘Palladio's palaces serve to adorn the Grand Canal' (Vol. I, p. 160).

5.
silver tripods, depending from chains
: A lamp with three metal rods or ‘legs' projecting upward and outward and attached to three chains suspended from a central fixture on the ceiling. Early in the first chapter of Vol. III, Barnadine lights a tripod lamp which is standing on stairs in the east wing of Udolpho. However, one critic of Radcliffe, writing in the
Spirit of the Public Journals
for 1797, sneeringly commented that ‘she suspends tripods from the ceiling by chains, not knowing that a tripod is a utensil standing upon three feet'. His comments are reproduced in full in Clara Frances McIntyre's
Ann Radcliffe in Relation to Her Time
(New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1920), p. 53.

6.
the goddess of spleen
: A character in Canto IV of Pope's
The Rape of the Lock
.

7.
the verses of Ariosto
: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) spent many years in the service of Duke Alfonso I of Este, whose family or house he exalted in his poem
Orlando Furioso
(1532), which is considered the greatest of the Italian romantic epics.

8.
‘
those faint traces… past
': Unidentified.

1.
[Shakespeare] Julius Cæsar
: I. ii.202–9.

2.
‘
Strike up… attention!
': Unidentified.

3.
Cynthia's ray
: Cynthia is a poetic name for the moon personified as a goddess. In classical mythology, the goddess of the moon, Artemis or Diana, is said to have been born on Mount Cynthus, hence this alternative name.

4.
canzonettes
: Short, light, part songs for several voices; madrigals.

5.
Casino
: A private assembly room or club. In the eighteenth century many of these were places of sexual licence and gambling, but Count Morano's casino appears to be more respectable. Mrs Piozzi, in her
Observations and Reflections
, speaks of Quirini's Casino
in Venice, at which ‘all literary topics are pleasingly discussed', and which she likens to Dr Johnson's ‘literary club' (Vol. I, pp. 179, 205).

6.
zendaletto
: Diminutive of
zendale
(meaning a shawl or veil). According to the
OED
, ‘a long piece of cloth falling from the back of the hood of a gondola into the water; hence the gondola itself '. Radcliffe takes the term from Mrs Piozzi's
Observations and Reflections
. In the sixteenth century gondolas became a status symbol. To prevent rivalry, in 1562 laws were passed that all gondolas except those used for state occasions should be painted black; a family could show its colours on the mooring poles. By the late seventeenth century there were 10,000 gondolas in Venice.

7.
The scenes of the Illiad illapsed… to her fancy
: Scenes about the war waged against Troy to recover Helen, wife of Menelaus; ‘illapsed' – sank or glided in, permeated.

8.
Ilion's plains
: The Trojan plain.

9.
fane
: temple.

10.
cruise
: Cruse, earthen vessel for liquids, drinking vessel. See Collins, ‘Eclogue the Second: Hassan; or the Camel-Driver', l. 3: ‘One Cruise of Water on his Back he bore', in
Oriental Eclogues. Written originally for the Entertainment of the ladies of Tauris. And now translated
(1757), originally published as
Persian Eclogues
in 1742. Radcliffe appears to have been influenced by Collins's
Oriental Eclogues
in the writing of her ‘Stanzas'.

11.
Aurora
: Roman goddess of the dawn.

12.
scite
: Site.

13.
Scamander
: A river (now the Menderes su) of the Trojan plain; also a Greek river god, son of Oceanus and Tethys.

14.
‘That from… sight'
: Thomson,
Britannia
(1729), ll. 16–17; ‘Even not yon sail, that from the sky-mixed wave' (l. 16) in the original.

15.
‘Softened into silence'
: Unidentified.

16.
‘The sailor… wave'
: Thomson,
The Seasons
. ‘Winter', ll. 137–8; ‘With him the sailor soothes' (l. 137) in the original.

1.
Thomson [The Seasons, ‘Winter']
: l. 364.

2.
took the fresco
: Took the (fresh, open) air.

3.
she felt it would be mean
: ‘Mean' here is used in the sense of ‘improper' or ‘ignoble'.

1.
Collins' ‘Ode to Fear'
: ll. 53–7; ‘lest thou meet' (l. 56) in the original.

2.
latin sails
: Lateen sails. A lateen sail is triangular and suspended by a long yard at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the mast. The term ‘Latin sail' (
voile latine
) was an allusion to its use in the Mediterranean.

3.
Italian revenge
: Radcliffe follows Shakespeare and the Jacobean playwright John Webster in linking Italy with strong passions, intrigue and murder. Unlike Walpole's Manfred in
The Castle of Otranto
, who alternately lusts and repents, Montoni never
displays remorse and is described as ‘a stranger to pity and fear'. The ‘delirium of Italian love' is alluded to in Vol. IV, Ch. XVII.

4.
Campagna
: Level plains, countryside; also used of the region around Rome, famous for its idyllic countryside.

5.
‘green delights'
: Collins, ‘Eclogue the Second', l. 25.

6.
curtain
: Curtain wall – a plain wall connecting two towers in a fortress.

7.
briony
: An English plant name of genus
Bryonia
, especially the common wild species which has red or white flowers.

8.
beaver
: The lower part of a face-guard of a helmet, when worn with a visor, but sometimes serving the purposes of both. Radcliffe's phrase echoes Horatio's description of the ghost in
Hamlet
(I.ii.230): ‘he wore his beaver up'.

1.
[Shakespeare] Julius Cæsar
: IV.iii.276–8.

2.
regatta
: Annette is referring to a boat race held on the Grand Canal in Venice in which Ludovico participated.

3.
Orlandos… Black-a-moors… Charly-Charly-magne
: Mrs Piozzi, in her
Observations and Reflections
, speaks of the literary knowledge of the gondoliers and their singing of the old romances. She is delighted to hear the gondolieri singing of ‘the flight of Erminia from Tasso's Jerusalem' (Vol. I, pp. 174–5). Ludovico is depicted as such a gondolier. In Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso
, Orlando assists the Frankish king Charlemagne to fight against the Moorish (‘Black-a-moor') king Agramante.