157 Origen: Snipe has either got the wrong Origen, or is being wittily sardonic about this early Christian philosopher and theologian.

158 in chancery: a wrestling term, locked under Sir Bodach’s arm.

159 Alsatia: an area outside the reach of the law, from the area of that name in London designated as a sanctuary from the fifteenth century.

160 auto-da-fé: a ritual of public penance and then punishment as decreed by the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church.

161 cut him dead: refused to acknowledge his presence, as a sign of her extreme displeasure.

162 Saint Elmo’s fire: the natural phenomenon of a glow around a sharp object caused by electrical discharge.

163 Peterhead or Lybster: fishing ports on the north-east coast of Scotland.

164 Grace and Favour apartments: an apartment in a castle or palace, loaned, often rent-free, to former servants of its well-dowered owner. Hampton Court Palace is well known for them.

165 Herrenhausen: former royal summer palace in Hanover, birthplace of George II of Great Britain, destroyed by Allied bombing during the war, rebuilt in 2008 after Warner’s death.

166 persona non grata: Latin, a prohibited person.

167 muniment room: the room housing an estate’s archives and documentation.

168 camphor bags: bags of camphor chips used to repel moths from laying their eggs in clothing and other textiles.

169 monkeys: the Chamberlain was evidently pre-Darwinian in his beliefs.

170 policies: eighteenth-century term for the grounds of an estate.

171 jolie-laide: French, ‘pretty-ugly’, beautiful in an unusual way.

172 Metamorphoses: the ‘Book of Transformations’ by the Latin poet Ovid, containing many classical myths of alteration and changing state, and the results of the inter-racial coupling of gods and humans.

173 sciolto e fortissimo: Italian, ‘loose and strong’, making a considerable noise.

174 Petrarchan sonnet: typically devoted to expressions of love.

175 manège: French, horsemanship.

176 Astolfo: character from fourteenth-century French courtly poetry and later in Renaissance epics, who owns a magical horse called Rabicano which is made of hurricane and flame and feeds on air.

177 Orlando furiously raving: possibly a reference to a puppet performance of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

178 conversazione: Italian, an evening of formal conversation on subjects from art, literature or science.

179 villanelle: a poem with a fixed arrangement of stanzas, most often on pastoral themes, appropriate for Nel’s behaviour in frolicking in the kitchen garden with a lover.

180 Gog and Magog: mythical British giants named after the persons from the Book of Ezekiel, represented by wooden statues in London’s Guildhall from before the seventeenth century.

181 Castor and Pollux: twin boys born to Leda after her rape by Zeus. They became demigods, later the constellation Gemini; their half-sisters were Helen of Troy (extreme beauty) and Clytemnestra (murdered by her son). They were patrons of horsemanship, boxing, wrestling and other athletic pursuits.

182 capillary attraction: water in a tube rises upwards against gravity by capillary action.

183 Orplid: a fantasy fairyland invented by the German Romantic poet Eduard Mörike in his poem ‘Song Weylas’ in 1831.

184 Cantuar! Ebor!: the formal abbreviations of the archbishoprics of Canterbury and York.