Note 3 — ASHCLIFFE HALL (continued 2)
Reading edition
"The vapors" were pre-eminently the fashionable malady of the reign of Queen Anne. The name answered to the sensation now known as ennui: but doubtless, as Miss Strickland suggests in her "Lives of the Queens of England," it was frequently used when its victim was suffering from nothing more remarkable or novel than a bad temper.