Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/357

 10 s. xii. OCT. 9, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

293

it is dangerous to operate, owing to th profuse haemorrhage which ensues. H added that, in consequence of this roya infirmity, a fashion arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of wearing lock of hair pendent from the left ears. (7 believe there is a portrait of a Stuart lad} still at Ham House so adorned. )

I* would be interesting if some reade of N. & Q.' could verify this story, and giv the right names and dates. Miss Agnes Strickland in her 'Queens of England (vol. v. p. 2) says :

"The line of sovereigns from whom Anne o Denmark (wife of King James I.) descended, hac been elected to the Danish throne on the deposition ot Christiern II., notorious for his cruelties IE Sweden, Her father, Frederick II., married Sophia daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg, and by her had, with two other daughters and a son, Anne born at Scanderburg, December 12th, 1575." Anne's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth was born in 1596, and marrying Frederick! elector Palatine, in 1613, died in 1662.

F. H. SUCKLING.

MBS. HAUTENVILLE COPE will find (p. 466] nearly a column of references to the various portraits of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, m the 'A.L.A. Portrait Index,' edited by W. C. Lane and Nina E. Browne. The list is far too long to be quoted here, whilst the invaluable ' Portrait Index ' may be consulted in the British Museum Reading- Room and also in the London Library : it ought to be in every other public library in London.

There are two portraits of the queen in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam : an eques- trian picture with her husband, by Adrien van de Venne ; and a miniature by Hoskins.

Incidentally I may be allowed to mention a long and most important paper on her, with many letters from the queen to the Tremoille family, in Archceoloqia, vol. xxxix (1863), pp. 143-72. W. ROBERTS.

ROBEBT SOUTHEY (10 S. xii. 46). There was a clever parody in Punch in 1887 on Southey's poem ' Father William.' It was addressed to the Emperor William, and was accompanied by a large cartoon repre- senting Punch hobnobbing with the Emperor on "his birthday :

" ^ r^ 1 " 6 old ' Kaiser William." great Punchius cried,

I hear you are ninety to-day ; Yet a gallanter chief ne'er marched at the head Of his squadrons in battle array." The Emperor was born 22 March, 1797. JOHN PICKFOBD, M.A. Mewbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

FIG TBEE IN THE CITY (10 S. xi. 107,

178). In the course of an interesting lecture on the church of SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate, delivered therein on 17 February last (and subsequently printed in pamphlet form), our rector, the Rev. Septimus Buss, remarked that

"the churchyard is verdant in the summer-time, under the direction of the churchwardens, and therefore pleasant to the eye. Above the only entrance-door is another of the so popular full- cheeked cherubs ; and on the wall there climbs a shrub, which, because it bears no fruit, is called the barren fig tree.' "

I do not know if this is of sufficient interest for MB. MAcMiCHAEL. I may say that, notwithstanding our rector's reference to it as a " shrub," the plant in question is, to the best of my belief, a veritable fig tree. I fancy it has been known to bear small fruit (which have, however, never attained to maturity) in former years.

WILLIAM MCMUBBAY.

WELTJE'S CLUB (10 S. xii. 167, 239). The name of the founders of this club is sometimes spelt Weltjie or Weltzie, but the correct orthography is Weltje.

Louis Weltje was born at Brunswick in

1745, and his brother John Christopher in

1 752 or 1 753. The latter married a daughter

of Buhl, the inventor of that exquisite

method of inlaying figures of unburnished

gold in dark wood, tortoiseshell, &c., which

is known as buhlwork (Feret's ' Fulham

Old and New,' iii. 18). When young men

the brothers came to England, and entered

the service of the royal family. John

hristopher Weltje held the position of

comptroller and clerk of the kitchen, or,

as some say, house-steward, in the estab-

ishment of the Prince of Wales, at a salary

of 1,600 a year ; while Louis held a similar

position in the household of the Duke of

York. Perhaps in more homely language

hey might be described as head cooks.

A.t the end of 1779 or the beginning of 1780,

he two princes, being dissatisfied with the

onduct of the committee of Brooks' & in

Blackballing some of their friends, established

a club of their own, and placed the two

Brothers in charge of it. Writing to his

Brother the Marquis of Buckingham in

Tanuary, 1780, William Grenville mentions

his fact, and adds that the club would

' probably be the scene of some of the highest

aming which has been seen in town "

' Buckingham Papers,' i. 363). The state-

nent in ' London Past and Present,' under

Dover House,' i. 516, that the club wa s

ounded in the winter of 1787-8, is not quite