By "Au Man and his Manners. By the Hon. Mrs. R. Erskine, Court Journal, 16 Jan., 1904. Holiday Fiction: Is the Englishman rude when Abroad?—Daily Mail, 26 Aug., 1902. Our Bad Manners,-Ibid., 17 Dec., 1904. MANNERS AND SOCIETY IN TEENTH THE EIGHCENTURY. A curious light is thrown on the manners and customs of this period by the recently published journal by Mrs. Thrale of her tour in Wales with For instance, when Dr. Johnson in 1774. she meets, in a country house near Bangor, for the first time a company of genuine boast Welch folks," although she cannot the elegance of the society," she is constrained to admit, "The men, however, were not drunk, nor the women inclined to disgrace themselves." At another entertainment in the same neighbourhood, while there was obstreperous merriment among the men," ," Mrs. Thrale records that she saw none of them drunk when they came to tea, we all returned home in very after which good time as could be, the servants sober and the mistress too. I wondered! 66 66 On their way back to London the party stopped a night with Burke at Beaconsfield, Mixing in Society. By the Right Hon. the where a very different state of matters was Countess (Longmans?). J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. ROYAL MANNERS TEMP. WILLIAM IV.between royal manners The difference during the first half of the nineteenth century, and those happily in vogue now, is curiously illustrated in the memoirs of the former period. Thus Raikes, writing in his diary under date of Friday, 13 June, 1834, residing in Paris, says :— We were "Mrs. D. [i.e. Damer, then visiting Paris] which says showed me a letter from I went, yesterday, with their Majesties to the private exhibition at Somerset House. received by the president of the Royal Society, who, among other portraits, pointed out to the King that of Admiral Napier, who has been comHis Majesty manding the fleet for Don Pedro. did not hesitate to show his political bias on this occasion by exclaiming immediately, Capt. Napier may be d-d, sir, and you may be d-d, sir; and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you down stairs, sir!'' At this time Don Pedro and Don Miguel were fighting for the Portuguese crown, and Don Carlos was fighting for the Spanish crown, and was against Don Pedro, while England and France secretly assisted Don Pedro, for political reasons. found. An old Mr. Lowndes, who dined the had spent three months from home among dunces of all ranks and sorts, but had never seen a man drunk till I came among the Wits. This was accidental indeed, but what of that? It was so." See Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale,' by A. M. OSBALDISTONE : ITS PRONUNCIATION.It is curious that this name of the hero of Scott's Rob Roy' is accented on the second syllable (Os-bal'dis-tone) in The Cyclopædia The name is genuine-it is of Names.' derived from a township in Lancashireand the stress is on the first and third Chelmondiston, syllables (Os'bal-dis'tone). The same is the with Barnardiston, But Don Pedro case and others of the same type. tendency to shift the stress, but, as with most I have met long and unmanageable names in English, they may be abbreviated. with a case of Osbaldistone being cut down to Osboston; and Chelmondiston is sometimes called Chimston. showed no gratitude to England for its help, There is no JAS. PLATT, Jun. Museum. In a small compass many of The last part of the essay is singular. It contains a long defence of Coleridge's Christabel and Kubla Khan,' and a bitter attack on Moore's adverse criticism of them in The Edinburgh Review. That Peacock should uphold the very poems he covered with ridicule in Nightmare Abbey' is indeed surprising. On the other hand, "FUNCTION," A CEREMONY.-The mean ing of "function" mentioned in the N.E.D.' his dislike to Moore is nothing new, since under 5 b, "a public ceremony; a social we know that a contribution of Peacock or festive meeting conducted with form to The Westminster Review on The Epiand ceremony," and there ascribed tenta- curean' led Moore to publish in The tively to Spanish origin, I have come across Times the poem entitled The Ghost of lately in French, viz., the translation of Miltiades,' a censure of the editor, Sir John Casanova's 'Memoirs,' Paris, Garnier Bowring, for having inserted the article Frères, tome iii. p. 148 : Il y a six mois.... in his magazine. Moore afterwards atque, me trouvant avec notre consul M. tempted, as a result of this incident, to Smith, avec lequel j'avais été voir je ne provoke Bowring to a duel, but the latter sais plus quelle fonction....” appears to have succeeded at last in pacifying him. A. B. YOUNG. I have never seen the word so used in that language. G. KRUEGER. Berlin. FAMILIES DYING OUT: AUSTIN.-As with plants, some human families seem to have a limited initial stock of vitality, which gradually exhausts itself, and which the crossing at each generation does not fully restore; but the falling below reproduction point often comes as an apparently sudden break. A striking instance of this may interest others, as it did me when I came upon it twenty years ago. Searching for the family of Cowper's Lady Austin (which I did not find), I found her husband's, as follows: T. L. PEACOCK'S ESSAY ON FASHIONABLE LITERATURE.'-The position taken up by Thomas Love Peacock as regards his literary contemporaries is well known to readers of his works. Every novel contains allusions to them; but it is sometimes difficult to discover the various writers who are castigated, under different names, by his ridicule and sarcasm. Dr. Garnett and other critics have supplied us with considerable help in this direction, and with their aid it is often an easy matter to unravel the veiled William Austin or Austen, of Heronden references to contemporary persons, fads, and Tenterden in Kent, had as eldest of and prejudices which are so frequent in six children Robert, created baronet 1660, Peacock's tales that they might almost who passed the title down through John, be said to constitute them. There is in Robert 2nd, and Robert 3rd (eldest of five), existence, however, an unpublished essay all three living at Hall Place, Bexley. The which contains an expression of many of the views and ideas that are to be found in the novels. It is entitled An Essay on Fashionable Literature,' and is included in vol. 36815 of the manuscripts in the British last-named and his two brothers died without issue, two of them, 1743-54, and the title passed to a younger branch, a great-grandson of the first Robert by a second son, holding Tenterden; who and whose two brothers, of four children, also died without issue, 1761-72 (the last being the husband of Cowper's friend), and the manor house was sold for a girls' boardingschool. The sister of the last three had but one child living to maturity, a daughter, who had but two children. I do not know the fortunes of the two sisters of the elder branch; but the male line of both had been utterly wiped out in one generation, by the deaths childless of six brothers of two well-separated lines, five at least coming to maturity and successively inheriting the title. This curious and sudden failure of vitality in the male and at least part of the female strain was not due to environment, for the two branches lived a good distance apart; and it can hardly have been the result of war or accident. I do not know whether all the males married; but if not, the argument does not lose much of its force. Hartford, Conn. FORREST MORGAN. Queries. WE must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. "TALLY."-Will any one who can explain tally as formerly used in certain card games, like faro and basset, send an explanation to me at Oxford. I wish also to learn about French tailler, taille, similarly used. J. A. H. MURRAY. VERDANT GREEN IN 1744. In reading a letter of the date 1744 I came across the name Verdant Green as a familiar allusion. Can anybody help me to discover who or what this prototype of Cuthbert Bede's famous character was? JOHN MURRAY. 50, Albemarle Street, W. WARLY LETTERS.-On 4 Jan., 1870, a sale was held at Canterbury of the contents of what was known as the Church House, formerly belonging to the families of Oxenden and Warly. Although there is no express mention of any private letters amongst the lots, there may have been some. anxious to trace any letters of John and Mary Warly and Lee Warly their son (1700-1800), and shall be much obliged if any of your readers who possess such letters will communicate with me. HENRY R. PLOMER. 44, Crownhill Road, Willesden, N.W. I am 66 "STANDING FOR PARLIAMENT."-What is the earliest use of the phrase 'to stand for Parliament"? I find it in a letter of 20 Feb., 1678/9, mentioning a "Mr. Finch, who stands to be parliament man for this University [Oxford]"; and again in one of 8 Feb., 1685/6-written by the recipient of the other advising a friend to stand for the county (Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the MSS. of the Earl of Egmont,' vol. ii. pp. 79, 179). ALFRED F. ROBBINS. 23 SIR HENRY AUDLEY.-Will some reader kindly inform me whether Sir Henry Audley, elder son of John, Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, was executed for high treason? If so, was it for complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt's plot or on some other charge? John, Earl of Warwick, had thirteen children, of whom two were named Henry and two Katherine. The younger Henry was killed at the siege of St. Quentin. EGERTON GARDINER. MOHACS: THE BATTLE.-Where can I find the best account of Eastern Europe at the time of the battle of Mohacs and immediately after, when the greater part of Hungary became a province of the Ottoman empire? I have been reading a drama in the Croatian language called Frankopan,' by Mirko Bogovic, and should like to see how the facts appear in the more sober light of history. JAS. PLATT, Jun. NOSEGAY IN THE PULPIT.-In "A Short Narrative of the Life of John Forster, of Wintringham, in the County of Lincoln, written by himself," Colchester (1810), p. 9, I find the following curious passage :— "As my way lay by the church, and the people were assembled, curiosity tempted me to go in; the minister was in his sermon, but instead of being a hearer, I became a spectator, and was censorious enough to fancy that he was more desirous of amusing himself with a nosegay he held in his hand than of benefiting his congregation." The date would be about 1760. As the writer had walked from Wintringham "about six miles," the place would probably be either Appleby or Burton Stather. Was it at all usual for ministers thus to amuse themselves (and their congregations) with a nosegay? J. T. F. Winterton, Doncaster. MISS ABBOTT'S PORTRAIT BY JOHN DOWNMAN. Can any one inform me as to the identity and family connexions of this lady, whose portrait was made by John Downman in 1793-original in the British Museum ? G. F. ABBOTT. Royal Societies Club, St. James's Street, S.W. COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT.-The origin of the name of Cowes has never yet been satisfactorily decided. The suggestions that it was derived from two coves (which are nonexistent); from the number of cows who once frequented a well on the site of the present town; or from two great guns placed on the two castles built by Henry VIII., "which did roar " from opposite sides of the Medina, do not appear convincing. I am anxious, therefore, to appeal to students of the early language of our islands for information as to whether the placename Cowse" is known to them as describing a wooded shore. 66 In a recent number of Lake's Falmouth Paper I find a few ancient Cornish names and places extracted from The History of Cornwall, by Fortescue Hitchens. Amongst these I have been struck by the following paragraph : "The Grey Rock on the Wood.'-The name for St. Michael's Mount when what is now Mount's Bay is said to have been covered with forests. In ancient Cornish it was 'Caraclowse-in-Cowse.'" Now we know that ancient woods covered the shores of the Medina and of the Solent; and vestiges of these woods remain in the form of copses all the way from Newport down both sides of the river, and westward on the Solent shores. 11 S. I. JAN. 29, 1910.] 66 NOTES AND QUERIES. Is it possible that this wooded harbour Cowse by the early British was known as inhabitants? and has its name lingered on in spite of the very strong invasion of the Jutes, whose long occupation would seem to have swamped all or nearly all the traces of the earlier islanders? Probably there are few places in England where the influence of but one race and one tongue is so strong, and where so very little of the Celt, and so much of the Saxon, can be noted as having blended in the words and the ways of the people. But there are at least two place-names suggestive of the earlier language, and it has seemed to me possible that the wooded harbour where no Saxon or Jutish settlement was formed where, in fact, no village stood till the sixteenth century-may therefore have kept its ancient name. I should be very grateful if any one conversant with the subject would consider the question, for it appears to me that the fact of the same name Cowes being applied to the two towns on the banks of the river 22 "Cowse favours the suggestion that if means a wooded harbour, it would apply equally to both shores, as both were thickly wooded. In any case, it seems somewhat remarkable that a town which sprang into being under Henry VIII. should bear a name of which the origin and meaning are entirely unknown to local historians, whose guesses are more amusing than convincing. Y. T. Hampshire-in 1775, which was the first occasion on which the American colonists successfully opposed the British soldiery, whom they, by virtue of their superior skill as marksmen, drove back through Lexington into Boston. 66 The title Comité du Salut public" is obviously imitated from the American Committees of Safety, formed in the American colonies in 1774, the Boston Committee being particularly conspicuous at the era of the Stamp Act in opposing British rule and raising the first army equipped by the colonists. Hence it seems likely that the famous Parisian square owes its name, "the shot heard round the primarily or secondarily, to the occasion of the firing of world" at the Concord river. If so, it is a compliment to the American people that has hitherto escaped the notice of the historian. It is to be hoped that the matter can be N. W. HILL. satisfactorily cleared up. New York. [There is no ground for our American correAfter the Terror, concord spondent's suggestion. was the order of the day.] MOHAMMED AND THE MOUNTAIN.-What V. H. C. is the origin of the proverb about Mohammed and the mountain ? "OLD LADY OF THREADNEEDLE STREET." By whom was this saying originated? The directors of the Bank of England were so called by William Cobbett, but I am told the saying has been also attributed to Sheridan. W. B. C. [The earliest instance in Farmer and Henley's Slang and its Analogues,' vol. v., is 1797, Gillray's caricature The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in Danger.' This use seems to imply that the term was already familiar.] LYON'S INN ADMISSION REGISTERS. Could any of your readers inform me whether, and if so, where, the registers of admissions PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.-According to Baedeker's Paris,' this square first received its name in 1795, it having been known since It can 1792 as the Place de la Révolution. hardly be supposed that the former designation was bestowed by its authors, whoever they were, out of regard for any principles of harmony or solidarity which actuated their minds at such a time. It was there of members of Lyon's Inn, the old Strand As they are in neither the that Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Danton, Inn of Chancery pulled down in 1863, are preserved ? Inner nor Middle Temple, I presume that and most of the revolutionary victims suffered death. It was also the scene of the pitched battle between the heroic Swiss they are in private ownership. Is this so ? guards and the rabble of Paris, when the latter made themselves masters of the Tuileries. Is it known who gave the place I have a its present name, and why? lurking suspicion that the appellation was chosen as being one of good omen for the ultimate success of the republic, subsequent to the aforesaid struggle, in memory of the engagement at Concord, Massachusetts not to be confounded with Concord, New R. B. C. SHERIDAN. Russell House, West Kensington Gardens. DR. THOMAS BRAY.-Is it known where the Rev. Thomas Bray, D.D. (founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), is The date of his death is given buried? as 15 Feb., 1729/30, but two or three bioGEORGE SMITH. graphies I have seen do not mention the place of burial. 8, Streatham Common, S.W. |