] ...for an explanation of the related (?)item below which is in one of Jane's letters: "We were very well entertained, and could have stayed longer but for the arrival of my list shoes to convey me home, and I did not like to keep them waiting in the cold."

I spent a pleasant hour googling for list shoes before I went to bed last night, but although I found many references to them in Victorian literature (as something amusing and old-fashioned) no-one was kind enough to describe them. Most frustrating.

I'm imagining something loose and comfy and made out of course material like hessian, that can be worn on top of your own shoes to protect them from the elements, or indoors as slippers. But that's just because of the following refereneces, which could be interpreted differently:

Dickens: Sketches by Boz

His indifference, however, was amply recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a very old gentleman with a silver–headed stick, who tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that were standing in one corner of the board, and indulged in a variety of gestures expressive of his admiration of the lady in the cloth boots, to the immeasurable amusement of a young fellow we put into a pair of long–quartered pumps, who we thought would have split the coat that slid down to meet him, with laughing…...

And later we have this:

But the old gentleman in the list shoes was the most amusing object in the whole party...

And then in Madame Bovary there the following:

As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow.

No time to find the other references which make made list shoes sound suitable for indoor casual wear, but I kept running across the mention of people sitting in front of the fire resting their list shoes on the fender, or coming into the room in list shoes and dressing gowns. That sort of thing.

I just can't imagine what they looked like. Where's the mistress of the Garderobe when you need her?!