Даниэль Дефо - Roxana

Conversation : way of life.

the Exchange, in the French Walk : The Royal Exchange, not far from Lawrence Pountney Lane in the City, was an imposing rectangular building with two floors around an inner quadrangle. It served as a meeting place for merchants, both foreign and English, provided warehousing and shops, and was a convenient place to exchange foreign currencies. The French Walk was located on the south side near the main entrance in Cornhill.

the Road between Bow and Mile-End : Stratford le Bow (Chaucer’s Stratford atte Bowe), about a mile east of Mile End. Mile End (which is exactly a mile from Aldgate and hence from the City of London) was still a hamlet in the country in Defoe’s day.

Whitechappel-Church-Wall : the church of St Mary Whitechapel (or St Mary Matfellon), located in Whitechapel street, part of the road from Aldgate to Mile End.

Lawrence Pountney’s-Hill ; inhabited by eminent City merchants.

Familiar : familiar spirit, demon associated with an individual.

humane : human.

Naturalists : students of nature, scientists. Roxana ironically suggests that scientists would be unable to explain a metaphysical phenomenon.

saluted me in Form : greeted me formally.

chop upon : chance upon, run into.

Conversation : society.

Amende Honorable : public apology, reparation.

Nimeugen : Nijmegen.

doubted : suspected.

to sollicit his Arrears : to attend to collecting his debts.

a Gasconade : an extravagant story. The natives of Gascony were notorious braggarts.

the Battle of Mons : the seige of Mons (1709) occurred in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13)

Hospital of the Invalids : the Hôtel des Invalides , established in 1670 by Louis XIV as a home for wounded soldiers.

talking my Platonicks : arguing theoretically.

a Copy of my Countenance : a pretence or outward show. Roxana is ‘putting on a face’.

Bedlam : properly, Bethlehem hospital, the lunatic asylum in Moorfields. It could be visited for a small sum on Sunday afternoons and was one of the principal sights of London. See Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain , ed. Pat Rogers (Penguin Books, 1971), p. 329.

no Notion of : no fancy for, no inclination to see.

Fermentation : agitation.

my Spirits : Distilled from the blood and circulating throughout the body, particularly through the nerves, the animal spirits were thought of as highly refined particles controlling man’s rational faculties. If disrupted or agitated the spirits would cause severe nervous disorders or death. See Introduction, pp. 18–21.

Shuffles : evasive tricks.

High-Dutch : German.

by-half , by a great deal.

Crassus : M. Licinus Crassus (c . 112–53 BC) was famed for his immense riches (acquired by unscrupuious means) and for his avarice. With Pompey and Julius Caesar, he was one of the First Triumvirate.

Pride and Ambition : It was widely believed in Defoe’s day that madness arose from passionate desires, such as ambition or pride. In the Tatler , No. 127 (31 January 1709), Steele concludes that all mental disorders arise from pride.

form Ideas of, in our Fancy, and realize to our Imagination : i.e., once pride or ambition takes possession of the mind, there is nothing, however unlikely, that we cannot conceive of, and then imagine we can achieve such a thing in actuality.

a meer Malade Imaginaire: an utter hypochondriac (after Moliere’s Le Malade Imaginaire , 1673).

it being Summer-Weather, and very hot : the heat of late summer, particularly upon the reappearance of the star Sirius, was long thought to cause madness.

the Head may be distemper’d, and not the Brain : that is, Roxana may be suffering only from ‘the vapours’ (see note 60), rather than the far more serious disturbance of the animal spirits, which could affect the brain and cause madness or even death.

a Patent for Baronet : letters patent, an open letter or document conferring the rank of baronet.

the Title of COUNT, with the Estate annex’d : In some continental countries, notably Germany, countships early on became territorial, rather than an hereditary personal honour.

the Indies : When neither east or west is specified, the East Indies are meant. The West Indies were generally so called.

one way : in that manner.

as the Wives do in Holland : In Holland women in many trades still shared the burden of work with their husbands.

the Indian King at Virginia : Opechancanough, who succeeded to the leadership of the ‘Confederacy’ or Indian empire alter the death of his kinsman Powhatan in 1618, had a house built for him by George Thorpe. Edward Waterhouse, the London Secretary of the Virginia Company, gave an account of the event in his Declaration of the State of the Colony… in Virginia (1622): Opechancanough ‘took such joy, especially in his lock and key, which he so admired as, locking and unlocking his door an hundred times a day, he thought no device in all the world was comparable to it’. (See H. C. Porter, The Inconstant Savage: England and the North American Indian: 1500–1660 (Duckworth, 1979), p. 457.) The story would have been known to Defoe from Captain John Smith’s account of ‘The Massacre upon the 22 March, 1622’ in the fourth book of his The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624).

merrily : facetiously.

breeded : braided.

Tossel : tassel.

Carriage : conduct.

Suit : set.

to ballance my former Friendship : to repay my earlier favour.

Figure : (financial or social) position.

the Compter, or Ludgate, or the Kings-Bench : three of London’s prisons, all used for debtors, Ludgate exclusively so.