prenais pas en voyant tous ces bouquets de violettes que les femmes me montraient de loin. D'où cela vient-il ?" Je lui racontai alors que depuis son départ, les soldats di saient toujours qu'il reviendrait au temps des violettes, et que l'on m'avait assurée qu'on ne l'appelait plus que le Pére la violette, ce qui le fit beaucoup rire. Like the querist we should be glad to know whether this account may be accepted as the true one. WE E have received notice of the appearance -it is to be next March-of a new Quarterly Review, entitled Antiquity, to be devoted, as the name implies, to the publication of papers and information dealing with the Past. The editor's name is one wellknown to our readers, and one which guarantees the soundness in scholarship of the new Review: Mr. O. G. S. Crawford. Among several others who have promised contributions are the Abbé Breuil, Professor Hamada (Japan), Professor Mawer, Dr. G. A. Reisher and Professor Tallgren, while the titles of nearly thirty articles ready for puo lication attest the good range to be covered. Although articles are to be written by specialists they are to be popular in character. Each issue of Antiquity will contain about 100 pages, with illustrations; the annual subcription (which includes postage to any part of the world) will be One Pound; and intending subscribers are asked to write to Mr. Crawford, at Nursling, Southampton. THE Manchester Guardian for Jan. 18 notes the departure on the previous Saturday from Liverpool for America of William Bullock, a Sioux Red Indian from the reservation of South Dakota, who came to England forty years ago, as a youth of 26 with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. He is returning-blind from the result of an explosion to wigwam life, intending too to find a squaw, though he is prepared to find that there is no living member of his tribe who remembers him. William Bullock worked during the Great War as a coal heaver. MR. Murray's list of forthcoming works contains some promising books of the order of memoirs and letters: Lady Frederick Cavendish's Diary'; the letters of Wellington to Lady Salisbury (A Great Man's Friendship'), and the letters and journal of Lady Ponsonby, for example. Mr. John Bailey is editing the first of these; Lady Burghclere is editing the Wellington letters, and Lady Ponsonby's papers are being brought out by her daughter. Two Hundred Years Ago. The LONDON JOURNAL. SATURDAY, January 21, 1726-7. LONDON. Accounts from Lincoln fhire, about LongSutton and thofe Parts, are full of the unfpeakable Diftrefs that Country is in; occafion'd by the forcing the Waters upon them, in vaft Quantities, from Bedford North Level by a great Number of Windmills, and other Mills, lately erected for that Purpose in the faid Level; under Colour of better conveying the Waters of the Level, through Lincolnshire aforefaid, to the Outfall at Sea; notwithstanding the fame is allowed on all Hands, to be, at prefent rather defective in its Depth, and confequently not fo ferviceable to draining. But the Lincolnshire Men say, that were the Outfall as deep as 'tis poffible to imagine any fuch Thing to be, yet thefe Mill-Waters being pufh'd on with infinitely more Force and Speed than they can be deliver'd to fuch Outfall at the Length of fourteen Miles, and upwards, and by the narrow ill-bank'd Courfe of the ShireDrain, muft, unlefs a Stop be fuddenly put to this Practice, over-run all the Lands on each fide of the faid Drain, to a very great Extent, and turn one of the richest Countries of England into a Sea. 13 their Imagination is groundlefs) That the Some are apt to imagine, (but fure Corporation of Bedford-Level not having been able to pafs their Bill for a new Outfall of the laft Seffion of Parliament, on ling by Way of Revenge upon the Country, their own Terms, have encouraged THIS Milfor their ftrenuous Oppofition to the Hard Conditions which were offer'd them by that Bill, Letters from Gibraltar have brought an Account, that Col. Kane (who acts there as Deputy-Governour till the Arrival of Col. Clayton) hath fent all unneceffary Perfons, as Women and Children, from the Place; and had likewife ordered all fufpected Perfons (as Spaniards and Germans) to depart with their Effects in a Time limited; that the Soldiers of the Garrifon were perfect Health. Literary and Historical square feet each. The kitchen at the back Notes. THE BAY AS A MEASURE OF SURFACE. IN literature and in old surveys bays of In the last number of the Transactions of the Hunter Archeological Society Mr. James R. Wigfull, F.R.I.B.A., secretary of the Society, has described a plan of 18 July, 1757, made by William Fairbank, surveyor, in which a number of small buildings in Sheffield are said to be "of 30 Yds. to the Bay." These small buildings consisted of a number of garden-houses, little houses," etc., of less than a bay each, which are estimated in yards and decimal parts of yards, and then summed up in bays, thus:Yds.Pts. 17.70 In No. 1 was a little more than 15 feet long and broad. In another part of the plan of 1757 Fairbank makes use of a perch 304 square yards, which is the perch of the imperial acre of 4,840 square yards. It would have been impracticable to have measured out the length and breadth of a bay of 304 square yards, and the architect of Walkley Hall came as near to the size of the imperial perch as he could. William Fairbank was an eminent surveyor living in Sheffield, and practising in a large district surrounding that town, His treatment of a bay of building as an exact measure of surface is very remarkable, and must, if confirmed, affect our knowledge of English rural life profoundly. It is highly probable that the bay as a measure of surface was known to Shakespeare. At Long Eaton, near Derby, the bay was a measure of surface, but we do not know its dimensions. In 1694 a fire 66 consumed fourteen dwelling houses, togeather with the barnes, stables, outhouses, and other buildings; containinge ninety bayes of buildings (Document in J. C. Cox's Annals of Derbyshire,' ii., p. 294). Whatever the size of the bay at Little Eaton was, it was a measure of the areas of all kinds of buildings, as is shown by the inclusion of outhouses. The word " bay," as in the expression of 30 Yds. to the Bay. bay of building," does not seem to have been in early use; the quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary do not go farther back than the sixteenth century. But the thing itself must have been very old. Two larger buildings are also mentioned, one of which contained 5.630 bays, or rather more than 5 bays; the other 9.068, or a little more than nine bays. The nine bays were evidently intended, when first constructed, to contain 270 square feet each. A rectangle of 5 by 6 yards or 15 by 18 feet makes 270 square feet, or thirty square yards. Half bays are often mentioned in surveys. There is another piece of evidence which indicates that in Sheffield a bay of building contained 270 square feet. In the volume which includes Mr. Wigfull's article is a description of a house in that city called Walkley Hall, probably built during the Commonwealth, which has just been pulled down, but which, before its demolition, was accurately surveyed by Mr. W. H. Elgar. The plan of this house shows that the two front rooms consisted of two bays of 270 a In The Evolution of the English House,' 1898, I maintained that a bay of building was the space required for the accommodation of two pairs of oxen in the oxhouse. This space, in the county of Durham, was 240 square feet. I gave a little more evidence in N. and Q.,' 9 S. iv. 431, seq. In Such a measure as this, whether of 240 square feet, 270 square feet, or an approximate extent, seems to have been the size of the bay in various English districts. Sheffield, at any rate, the bay of 270 square feet became a standard measure, and on that measure the acre seems to have been founded. There were other acres besides the imperial acre, but they all seem to have contained 160 square perches. It would be strange if other measurements of bays were not recorded in other old documents. According to old Swedish law the allotment of the land followed the division of the toft or area on which the house stood: Tompt är ackers (tegs) modhir, area mater est agri, d.i. nach der theilung des tomt richtet sie die des ackerlands" (Jacob Grimni, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer,' 1854, p. 539). This is almost tantamount to saying that the number of a man's " bays "determined the extent of his land. It may here be noted that the messuages in the village of Royston, near Barnsley, were known metesteads, i.e., measuring places, my time. as in I submit a table of the various divisions of the hide, with the monetary units associated therewith, together with the number of bays, and the number of oxen in the plough team: а Mr. Chinnery, like other men of extraordinary talent, was extremely odd and eccentric, so much so as at times to make me think him deranged. His health certainly was not good; and he had a strong tendency to hypochondria which frequently made him ridiculously fanciful, yet in spite of his mental and bodily infirmities, personal vanity showed itself in various ways. When not under the influence of low spirits, he was but cheerful, pleasant companion, if hypochondriacal was melancholy and dejected to the greatest degree. The Chief Justice thought it incumbent on him to receive him (Mr. Chinnery) as his guest. He therefore allotted to his exclusive use two handsome apartments, and of course considered him one of the family. It being the middle of the vacation he commenced, and executed the work in the court room. Notwithstanding he laboured incessantly, being generally at work from sunrise until sunset, it took him near three months ere the picture was completed, he being twice during that period obliged to lay it by for several days account of severe indisposition. од Referring to a smaller picture of Sir Henry Russell which Chinnery also painted, Hickey writes as follows: This small picture he had very nearly completed in a style no way inferior to the large work, when he was attacked by so severe an inflammation in his eyes, as totally to incapacitate him from using a pencil, and during the remainder of my stay in Bengal he was obliged to shut himself up, excluding almost every ray of light from his chamber, his spirits being so depressed he would not submit Sir Henry Russell or any friend whomsoever; in which melancholy state I left him. I have lately heard that soon after my departure from Calcutta, Mr. Chinnery became determinedly insane, and has ever since been kept under restriction, being now pronounced a confirmed and incurable lunatic. Hickey compares (Vol. iv. 391) Home's portrait of Sir John Anstruther, Russell's predecessor, with Chinnery's portrait of Russell very much to the disadvantage of the former: Oh! what a wretched daub did it appear when in a few months Chinnery's picture of Sir Henry Russell was placed by its side." Hickey was, however, a very bitter enemy of Anstruther, and perhaps a spice of malice may be scented here. Concerning the, portraits of the two children of Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the late Constance, Lady Russell of Swallowfield Park, Reading, tells a romantic tale in her book The Rose Goddess' (1910): For many years there hung on the walls of Swallowfield a beautiful large oil painting by Chinnery, R.A., of two Eastern children, a boy and a girl, life size. The colouring was rich, the whole picture very pleasing and highly decorative, and Sir Henry Russell and his family valued it extremely. In an evil day for them, a lady from Devonshire, Mrs. Phillips by name, who was paying a visit in the neighbourhood (Mrs. Phillips was staying with Mrs. Clive at Barkham Manor in the summer of 1816) came over to Swallowfield and asked to see this picture. Being shown it she was much affected and shed floods of tears, for she was the little girl portrayed by Chinnery. The boy was her brother who was dead, and the staircase was the entrance to her beautiful home in India, which she had never seen since she was a child. Sir Henry was so touched that he said the picture should be hers, and notwithstanding the remonstrances of his family he left it to her in his Will, and at his death, in 1852, it was sent to Mrs. Phillips in Devonshire where *This was, of course, mere hearsay.. 1 it still is in the house of one of her descendants. There remains at Swallowfield only an autotype taken from the picture, which gives no idea of the charm of the original, so much of which was dependent on colouring. The little boy, one can see, was handsome, but it is difficult to realise that the somewhat putty-faced little girl, as reproduced in the autotype, should have developed into the beauty immortalised by Carlyle as his Rose Goddess and the Blumine of Sartor Resartus, yet such was the case. Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick, born 1764, succeeded his brother in 1797 as Resident at the Court of Hyderabad where Khyr Oon Nissa, great niece of Meer Allum, the Prime Minister, fell in love with him and told him so. They were married by civil contract and had two children, who were sent to Colonel Kirkpatrick's father to be brought up. They were christened in England and named respectively William George and Katherine Aurora. Lady Russell goes on to state that Chinnery painted the picture of the children shortly before their departure from India. a ings "-i.e., of his four children. "It is That great man in face and scenery, Who looks on Nature with an eye bold and free, And steals her charms more keenly than the nest. It has been estimated that Chinnery's earnings in Calcutta were as high as 5,000 rupees a month yet, although he drank neither wine, beer, nor spirits, he seems to have been wasteful and extravagant to a degree and, in 1825, was forced to make a somewhat hurried exit from India in order to escape the pressing claims of his creditors. When he died at Macao in 1852 a painting of his, found in a box, was bought by Mr. John Dent of Dent and Co., Hong In Calcutta, where he lived till 1825, Chinnery enjoyed an immense vogue as a portrait and miniature painter, producing a vast number not of portraits only but also of pictures of scenery. He painted portraits of Sir Henry Russell, Chief Justice, uncle of Rose Aylmer (Landor's Rose Aylmer); of Sir Francis Workman MacNaughten; of the Nawab Saudut Ali Khan; of Sir Edward Paget and Sir George Nugent, Commandersin-Chief in India; of the lively William Hickey; of Thackeray and his parents, and of many Indian native gentlemen, who at first entertained, Mr. Cotton tells us, curious superstition about him, viz,, that anyone whose portrait he painted was foredoomed to a premature death. Hickey states that the portrait of himself was a very capital likeness," that it occupied a corner in Sir Henry Russell's dining-room in the Court House of Calcutta." This portrait seems to have been lost. The Diary of Maria, Lady Nugent, has references to the artist, e.g., May 27, 1812, Mr. Shakespeare introduced Mr. Chinnery (the miniature painter) to me-saw Chinnery's paintings the likenesses excellent," and again June 17, 1812, "Sir George sits twice a week to Chinnery-went in the evening to see his minatures which are very good indeed." On Feb. 20, 1823, Sir Edward Paget ment is not correct and that from the time * Miss Maguire informs me that this statewrote to his wife: Upon my return from of his arrival there until his death, Chinnery my drive I found Mr. Chinnery in the act was only once away from Macao for a fortof hanging the picture of my beloved darl-night, when he went to Canton. Kong. It is a picture of the Bund at Calcutta, a boat with a Lascar crew lying beside it, a ship in the river with the Blue Peter at the fore and a European-evidently intended to be Chinnery himself-sun-hat in hand bowing towards the city, a scroll at the top bearing the words: Thermometer 200, too hot for me. The vast bulk of his debts had indeed made Calcutta too hot for him and, as he stated himself, he had "to bolt to China for £40,000 of debt." Shortly after his arrival in China he went to reside at the Portugese settlement of Macao, but it is said that hearing his wife contemplated following him thither he removed for two years to Canton,* a city to which European women were not then admitted. It must be added, however, that he made regular remittances to his wife, sending her moreover a yearly sum to keep her quiet. So far as we know Chinnery never saw her or his children again, His eldest son, John Eustace, born in Dublin, September, 1801, died unmarried June 10, 1822, and is buried at Berhampore (Moorshedabad) where an inscription to his memory is still to be seen on a tablet on the north wall of the cemetery. His daughter, Matilda, born also in Dublin, October, 1800, married in Calcutta, Oct. 1, 1819,* James Cowley Brown, Civil Servant, and eventually Civil and Session Judge, who died at Cacutta Jan. 15, 1854. Matilda Brown, Chinnery's daughter, died at Brighton, March 21, 1879, leaving, we are told, numerous descendants. Two married daughters, Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Clark, are the only relatives mentioned in her will, but there were two others, Mrs. Archer and Lady Christison. During Chinnery's residence in Calcutta one of his pupils was a Mrs. Browne, wife of Captain (subsequently Colonel) Browne, who was herself an artist of some considerable merit. With the Brownes he was on terms of great intimacy and several of his letters to them have been preserved. Some of these letters are now in the possession of the present writer; of some others he has copies through the great courtesy of Colonel A. N. E Browne of Sungrove, Newbury, Berks, a great-grandson of this pair. The letters are mainly criticisms of his pupil's drawings, hints as to processes of painting etc., e.g., the use of powdered glass sifted through the very finest muslin to produce a surface which nothing else at all will." "There is not so great an Art as teaching," he writes, And Truths unknown, proposed as things forgot." 66 There is something about Vermilion very curious-Vermilion is Vermilion." In a letter of Aug. 1, 1814, he makes allusion to my good sister at Madras." In one of Nov. 25, 1816, he tells of Warren Hastings's ring with its Persian inscription meaning: "This too is passing,' "" "" a consolation in all he suffered and a comfort to anyone,' Chinnery adds. And in the same letter he tells a fantastic story, reminiscent of the Arabian Nights, of the late Lord Charle mont." *Sept. 1819, according to the East Indian register. The letters teem with allusions to his absorption in work and often to his state of health, at times very indifferent. Not a moment is left to me even to go and see and breakfast with D'Oyly, the last man on earth I would neglect." "You shall find that if my Art (and God knows I have nothing else to build on!) has been the means of my having met minds as you and many others about me, I will show myself worthy of attentions and distinctions that are my greatest pride. But I have not studied for 25 years for nothing nor for a little there are not 6 at home even who I would stand in any awe of-but don't say I said so-I only say thus much to give you confidence that I feel my ground safely. In August, 1820, he writes to Mrs. Browne. making mention of his wife, who is to accompany him to an evening party at the Brownes. In July, 1821, in the last letter of the series he has been "laid up these 4 last days and am still so with 30 boils on by left leg-mentally I am in misery-the necessary suspension of my business." All pretty well at Brownes," he adds, the youngster likely to do well and liveMatilda not quite so well the last time I heard-Sunday." The reference here is to his son-in-law and daughter and their child. Chinnery's zeal for work did not desert him in China, where his output of pictures was enormous. Nothing seemed to come amiss to his brush or to his pencil; portraits, river scenes, buildings; and we are told that the heads of the great mercantile houses aimed at possessing a Chinnery, just as one might aim at owning a piece of plate. Sir Robert Buchanan Jardine of Jardine Matheson & Co., possesses some forty of his paintings; Major Henry Keswick eighteen of his Chineses pictures; Miss Maguire of tures in oils besides about 1,500 of his Dublin has some of his portraits and picpencil and gouache sketches; the late Reverend Marmaduke E. Browne of Hampstead had some of his pictures and his letters bequeathed from his grandparents, Colonel and Mrs. Browne who were resident in Cal cutta between 1812 and 1822. |