Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/81

 10 s. x. JULY 25, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

61

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1908.

CONTENTS.-NO. 239.

NOTES : Hazlittiana, 61 Shakespeariana, 63 Bonaparte on the Northumberland, 64 Sydney Dobell and his Edinburgh Friends The "Deedler": "Deedling" 66 Widow Maurice, Printer, 67.

QUERIES : Don Saltero's Tavern, Chelsea Comte d'An- traigues Silvretta Mountains, 67 Anne Walton's Epi- taph in Worcester Cathedral" Chautauqua " Melampus and the Saint Gladstone's Last Moments Authors of Quotations Wanted Medal of Charles I. Mill at Gos- port, Hants, 68 Family Arms Voltaire on Love Castle- man Family Clement Family C. Barron, 19, Pall Mall Capt. Cook's Voyages Farrington, Clockmaker Snail- eating and Gipsies, 69 Blackman=Fairway Whittier One-Tree Hill, Greenwich, 70

REPLIES : Constables and Lieutenants of the Tower of London, 70 The National Flag Milton and Christ's College, Cambridge Plaxtol "Thurcet" Book Margins, 72 Field-Glasses in 1650 Round Oak Spring Chalk Farm, formerly Chalcot Farm Latin Pronunciation Johnsoniana De St. Philibert Anonymous Works " Rise," Active Verb, 73 Giles Heron Brass as a Sur- name Auchors of Quotations Wanted, 74" Femmer " Single Tooth Hair becoming suddenly White through Tear, 75-T. L. Peacock : " Skylight " and "Twilight" Vernon of Hodnet John Zephaniah Holwell " Pro- methean "Nursery Rime Rushlights, 76 Maps Prior and his Chloe Victorian Coin" The Crooked Billet," 77 Chalice Inscription, 1645 Clergy in Wigs Stuffed Chine Waldock Family" Pink Saucer "Surrey Gardens, 78.

NOTES ON BOOKS: ' Nunburnholme ' ' Catalogue of the Library of Charles Darwin ' ' Documents relating to the Office of the Revels ' ' Satiro-Mastix ' ' Poetical Works of Keats.'

Notices to Correspondents.

HAZLITTIANA.

(See 10 S. ix. 101, 177, 292.)

II. THE WINTERSLOW ESTATES.

" PRAY are the Winterslow estates en- tailed ? "Lamb to Hazlitt, 2 Oct., 1811.

(a) In his ' Memoirs of William Hazlitt ' Hr. W. Carew Hazlitt refers to Lieut. John Stoddart, R.N., as "a retired and dis- appointed navy man, who had inherited or acquired (I hardly know which) a small property near Salisbury, at a village called Winterslow." In the course of time Lieut. Stoddart died, and was buried, according to the register of St. Martin's Church, Salis- bury, on 20 July, 1803. On 1 May, 1808, ihis daughter Sarah became the wife of William Hazlitt. Referring to the event, iMr. Carew Hazlitt writes :

"Mrs. Hazlitt's property at Winterslow, which Tiad been left to her by her father, with a rever- sionary interest in what he bequeathed to Mrs. Stoddard for her life, was settled upon herself at lier brother's instigation, and much to my grand- father's annoyance. There was about 120J. a year altogether."

Mr. Birrell, in his * William Hazlitt,' gives further currency to this statement as to her income and its source. " Miss Stoddart," he says,

"was not romantic, but determined to be married, though with a settlement upon herself and her issue of her cottages at Winterslow, which pro- duced the annual sum of 12W."

The first time I visited Winterslow, it occurred to me that if Sarah Hazlitt ever enjoyed an income of 120Z. from cottages there, her father must have bequeathed to her every cottage in the village. But on investigation I could find no trace of any such extensive Stoddart property there.

(6) That Sarah Stoddart, at the time of her marriage, had a perfect right to secure to her own use what property she possessed, no one will gainsay. Being, however, in- terested in the problems of heredity, I felt a desire to ascertain, if possible, whether the closefistedness which ever characterized her in monetary transactions was a matter of transmission or of acquirement. She seems to have been called Widow Blackacre, after Wycherley's " perverse, bustling, masculine, pettifogging, and litigious " creation ; and Mary Lamb once wrote to her of a certain Jewish bargain with a lover. Then what a contemptible document is that later diary of hers when in Scotland during the divorce proceedings ! " I met him [Hazlitt] by the way : he gave me 10." " 1 wanted more money." " He would let me have the money as he could get it " ; and so on ad nauseam. Then came Hazlitt' s second marriage and his continental honeymoon. But Sarah, the divorced, was in Paris when Hazlitt arrived there, and she wanted money from him and got it.

(c) In the Salisbury city accounts for 1808 there is an entry that " Mr. Hazlett " had paid his year's rent of 151. 15 s. for a garden in St. Ann Street.

The foregoing items marked (a), (6), and (c), are set down in such manner be- cause, although but loosely connected and without apparent sequence, they all seemed to me to point to one document for elucida- tion, viz., the will of Lieut. Stoddart. A copy of this was secured forthwith ; and it runs as follows :

I John Stoddart of the City of New Sarum in th County of Wilts a Lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy being in good health and of sound and perfect mind memory and understanding (praised be God) but considering the uncertainty of tnis life do make publish and declare this to be my last Will and Testament in manner following (that is to say)