Saturday, March 3, 2012

landaulet

Yeah, I know--talk about your esoteric. But I've finally written my review of P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberly, and before I leave the matter behind, I thought I'd check out that last niggling word problem I had with it. No spoilers here, but in the middle of the book, Elizabeth and crew head out to visit some long suffering cottagers, and to do this, they all ride in a landaulet. James apparently assumes that we all have had such experiences, because no description is given. It's got to be some kind of coach or carriage or at least conveyance and presumably not a shabby one, given that this one is owned by the Darcys of Pemberly.

So let's look into it.


***

To be perfectly honest, I was reading this word wrong, which may account to some degree for my inability to make sense of it. I kept seeing it as "laudaulet", and in fact the header originally said that, but I decided not to perpetuate my own confusion.

Well, I guess you could say that the landaulet was an Austen era convertible. It was a smaller version of the landau, named for the German city in which it was manufactured, which was a  light four-wheeled carriage, suspended on elliptical springs, whatever those are. (Although there is a minority theory which has it that it all goes back to the Spanish lando, a light carriage drawn by mules, and going back from there to the Arabic al-andul.) At any rate, the landau has a two part folding top that comes from the front and the rear, while the landaulet only has the the rear folding top.




If you're wondering why P.D. James bothered specifying such a vehicle in the story, because I certainly did, well, it turns out that there is a lot of differentiation between carriages in Austen's novels. In fact, here is a very lively little paper on these things, which for Austen fans is much more worth your while than anything further I could say here.

20 comments:

  1. Assuming my memory serves my well, I had never heard this word before. So I'm impressed.

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  2. James uses it three or four times in this sequence, so in this case, it is a little hard to overlook.

    The word has made me think I have some minor form of dyslexia, because half the time I still read it as laudaulet.

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    1. Currently I'am writing a paper on the Landau-type carriage, and deals with the subtype called landaulet...This article helped me in some kind of doubts about the characteristic Landaulet. I'am interested in where you find the information about the origin of the Spanish-Arabic word Lando. This charriage is mentioned in one of the Jane Austen novel. Thank you, Anterra

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    2. Anterra, thanks for the question. My source on that is the Online Etymology Dictionary. The particular link is here.

      The Klein mentioned is Dr. Ernest Klein, who wrote A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, which you can find out more about on the sources page of the same website.

      It sounds unlikely, and yet just close enough to be intriguing.

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    3. Thanks for so quick reply. I will look at the mentioned literature. The theory of the Spanish-Arabic origin word is less likely, but it is interesting and worth mentioning. I believe that my work would be incomplete without a presentation of various aspect of the origin of the carriages which I write. Best regards, Anterra (Sonja:-))

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    4. Good luck on your project, Sonja. I you turn up anything interesting around all this, please let me know.

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  3. Maybe it made you feel as if you'd taken a bit too much laudanum, another old-time drug I know from crime novels.
    =======================================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  4. I was really thinking the word might be related to "laud" somehow, which would have been interesting. Instead, it's just a little landau.

    Not that I knew what a landau was.

    One thing I forgot to report was the way these names were later taken over for cars.

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  5. Apropos of nothing except sound, a mandolin-like instrument popular in Cuban music is called the laúd, pronounced, roughly, la-OOD). It gets its name from a similar Arabic instrument called the oud, and I presume the Spanish name comes from assimilation of the Spanish article la with the Arabic name. No mystery, of course, about how Arabic influence got to Spain.

    Here’s a wonderful song that features Barbarito Torres at the far left playing the laud . Note the moment before his solo when the female backup singer calls him “Barbarito, el rey de laúd,” that is, "king of the laúd."
    =================================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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    1. Thanks, Peter. I tried to listen to that earlier, but the visual part got frozen. It worked fine just now, though, and I was able to catch that king of the laúd part.

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  6. Loved learning the name of this vehicle. And of the laud, musical instrument.

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  7. Yes, Kathleen, there are times when error has its own rewards.

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  8. weird...the first thing that popped into my head was upon seeing landau think of martin landau in that 70's series SPACE:1999 which i was hooked on.
    Yeah i know...

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  9. Nice to see an old guy shaking it like that, too. Pio Leyva was still full of energy at an advanced age.

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  10. Dan, Martin Landau was my first thought too, once I'd actually spelled the word right. But I remember him from even earlier than that, in his old Mission Impossible role. He and Barbara Bain who was also in it were husband and wife in real life. And my dad went to school at the University with Barbara--he knew her slightly from being in the theatre crowd, although in those days, she was known as Millie Fogel.

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  11. Peter, yes, I was glad to be introduced to Pio Leyva as well. Gotta make some time for those Youtubes.

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  13. You could start where I did a few years ago: By watching The Buena Vista Social Club. That led me to individual albums by the musicians who appeared in the movie, and these, in turn, led me to music that these 60-, 70-, 80- , and 90-year-olds had made when they were much younger and to musicians they had performed with back then. It's a world of great music.
    ========================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

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  14. I did watch Buena Vista Social Club, but didn't take it further, and have since forgotten all their names. Not surprised that he was one of them, though.

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  15. Seana: This version of “Alto Songo” features first Pio Leyva, then Manuel “Puntillita” Licea and Ibrahim Ferrer as vocal soloists. All were part of the Buena Vista Social Club, as were at least some of the backing musicians.
    =======================================
    Detectives Beyond Borders
    "Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
    http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete