There’s a scene in Randiana, or The Excitable Tales, from 1864, in which our rakehell protagonist falls in lust over the dinner table:
Madeline, in short, was in every inch a woman to chain a lover to her side. I had patrolled the Continent in search of goods; I had overhauled every shape and make of cunt between Constantinople and Calcutta; but as I caught the liquid expression of Madeline’s large sensuous eyes, I confessed myself a fool. Here in Kensington, right under a London clubman’s nose, was the beau ideal I had vainly traveled ten thousand miles to find. She was sprightliness itself in conversation, and I could not sufficiently thank De Vaux for having introduced me into such an Eden.
Lamb cutlets and cucumbers once more broke in upon my dream, and I was not at all sorry, for I found the violence of my thought had burst one of the buttons of my fly, a mishap I knew from past experience would be followed by the collapse of the others unless I turned my erratic brain wanderings into another channel; so I kept my eyes fixed on my plate, absolutely afraid to gaze upon these two constellations again.
‘As I observed just now,’ said the somewhat fussy little doctor, ‘cucumber or cowcumber, it matters not much which, if philologists differ in the pronunciation surely we may.’
‘The pronunciation,’ said Father Peter, with a naive look at Madeline, ‘is very immaterial, provided one does not eat too much of them. They are a dangerous plant, sir, they heat the blood, and we poor churchmen, who have to chastise the lusts of the flesh, should avoid them in toto; yet I would fain have some more.’ And suiting the action to the word, he helped himself to a large quantity.
I should mention that I was sitting nearly opposite Lucy, and seeing her titter at the paradoxical method the worthy Father had of assisting himself to cucumber against his own argument, I thought it a favourable opportunity to show her that I sympathised with her mirth, so, stretching out my foot, I gently pressed her toe, and to my unspeakable joy she did not take her foot away, but rather, indeed, pushed it further in my direction.
I then, on the pretence of adjusting my chair, brought it a little nearer the table, and was in ecstasies when I perceived that Lucy not only guessed what my manoeuvres meant, but actually in a very sly-puss-like way brought her chair nearer too.
Then balancing my arse on the edge of my seat as far as I could without being noticed, with my prick only covered with the table napkin, for it had with one wild bound burst all the remaining buttons on my breeches, I reached forward my foot, from which I had slid off my boot with the other toe, and in less than a minute I had worked it up so that I could just feel the heat of her fanny.
I will say this for her, she tried all she could to help me, but her cursed drawers were an insuperable obstacle, and I was foiled. I knew if I proceeded another inch I should inevitably come a cropper, and this knowledge, coupled with the fact that Lucy was turning wild with excitement, now red, now white, warned me to desist for the time being.
I now foresaw a rich conquest — something worth waiting for — and my blood coursed through my veins at the thought of the sweet little bower nestling within those throbbing thighs, for I could tell from the way her whole frame trembled how thoroughly mad she was at the trammels which society imposed. Not only that, the moisture on my stocking told me that it was something more than the dampness of perspiration, and I felt half sorry to think that I had ‘jewgaged’ her. At the same time, to parody the words of the poet laureate:
‘Tis better to have frigged with one’s toe,
Than never to have frigged at all.
The game of footsie, it would seem, is eternal. But no — the reason I shared this excerpt was to share my puzzlement over the word in quotes in the penultimate sentence. What means “jewgaged”?
In context, it seems to mean something like “teased” or “frustrated”. Perhaps it’s anti-semetic slang, meaning something like “cheated”; I suppose that would put it in the same category and ill spirit as those infamous epithets “Indian-giver” and “Welsher”. Sadly, I don’t have an Oxford English Dictionary, and Google finds it nowhere but the same text I found it in.
If anybody’s got a dictionary or source that can shed some light, I’d love to hear about it.
