Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/445

 10 s. xii. NOV. e, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The Queen's Theatre stood on the site of the present His Majesty's and the Carlton Hotel, and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree is n aturally interested in the find. Dr. William Martin, of 2, Garden Court, Temple, has kindly favoured me with a full description of site and of those connected with the theatre.

I subjoin a copy of the inscription : April the 18 th 1704, in the Third Year of the Happy Reign of our Sovereign Lady Queen ANNE : This Corner Stone of the Queens Theatre, was laid by His Grace Charles Duke of Somerset, Master of the Horse to Her most Sacred Majesty.

WM. BTJRROUGH HILL. Above-Bar, Southampton.

CHILDREN WITH THE SAME CHRISTIAN NAME. Mr. Gairdner, in his introduction to ' The Past on Letters,' p. xxxii, mentions that John Paston, executor to Sir John Fastolf, " had a considerable family, of whom the two eldest sons, strange to say, both bore the same Christian name as their father." Several instances of the custom have been recorded in ' N. & Q.,' but room may perhaps be found for the following.

In the Rothwell Register (Yorks Parish Register Society) for 1547 John and John, twin sons of John Sayvell, were baptized, and also Joan and Joan, twin daughters of Ralph Moore. And in 1548 Joan and Joan, twin daughters of Thomas Storr, were baptized. G. D. LUMB.

LANGUAGE AND PHYSIOGNOMY. Mention has been frequently made of the effect which Southern indolence or Northern briskness has had in softening or hardening the components of words. It has often occurred to me to wonder what part languages have taken in modelling the features of their respective users ; but I have never tried to work the matter out, to prove my theory that certain modes of uttering consonants and vowels insensibly shape the lips through which they pass, and to a minor degree affect other details of the face. I am too ignorant to know whether any competent person has studied the subject, and published the result of his observations. I was almost startled to find Mr. Charles Marriott on the track in ' A Spanish Holiday,' but he did not go very far. At Las Huelgas, near Burgos, he says,

"the girl at the counter seemed hardly to under- stand my request for wine. She stared at me in a puzzled manner, and then said, ' Oh, bino ! ' This interchange of the Spanish v and b, often compro- mised by something between the two, impossible to reproduce phonetically, is curiously suggestive of

Southern languor, as if the lips, heavy with heat, were unable to discriminate between the two sounds. The faltering articulation of the middle sound seems to have left visible traces of a wistful charm on the sensuous lips of the Spanish woman. This correspondence between sound and shape is, I think, not merely fanciful : you can see ' laidy ' on the lips of the London shopgirl, and in. Lancashire there is a characteristic type of mouth associated with the production of the nearly French eu sound, as in 4 feut-ba' for ' foot-ball.' " P. 203.

With due deference to Mr. Charles Marriott, I should have thought the sound between v and b might be phonetically, if not typo- graphically, reproduced. Also, I believe, that a London shopgirl who did not say " madam " or " moddam " to a customer would refer to her as a " lidy," and not as " laidy." I wonder whether the Hebrew nose and mouth, the Greek, the Latin, were in any way due to the tongues adjacent.

ST. SWITHIN.

LEASE FOR 3,000 YEARS. In Close Roll, Part IV., 1006, 19 Elizabeth, I came upon an entry concerning a transfer by Peter Yorke, of Mydelsmore in York, to William Lambert, of a messuage of Stayneth Coote in Kylneseye, in Craven in York, to " holde unto thende of the terme of 3,000 yeres next ensuing, and fully to be complete and ended, without impeachment of any waste, and without any rent, fealty, or other sute," except towards the queen's yearly tenth 2s. l%d., and to the said Peter Yorke and his heirs one penny, " with suit to the Manor Court. . . .while it doth last."

C. C. STOPES.

[Accounts of other long leases will be found at 9 8. xii. 25, 134, 193, 234, 449, 513 ; 10 S. i. 32.]

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, EDWARD STRONG, AND CAPT. W. H. NARES. No doubt the new history of St. Paul's Cathedral by Arch- deacon Sinclair is as exhaustive as interesting,, and one wonders whether a portrait of Edward Strong, Master Mason during the whole time of its building, has found a place either in the Cathedral or in the history. An old friend of mine, deceased many years ago, Capt. W. H. Nares, R.K, was a direct descendant of his, and had a fine portrait of his ancestor by Sir Godfrey Kneller. It represented Strong holding in one hand a square and compasses and in the other a plan of the projected cathedral.

Strong died in 1723, and was buried in St. Peter's Church at St. Albans, where there is a monument to his memory, with a bust surmounting it representing him in the long flowing wig of the period, as in the portrait. One would like to know