Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/169

 s. v. FEB. 17, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Thames means that the service was discon- tinued immediately after the explosion of the Cricket, I think lie is mistaken. I remember the Anfc and the Bee, and occasionally travelled by them ; but tins cannot have been so early as 1847. Speaking from memory only, I think the halfpenny boats were running at all events as late as 1854. WILLIAM HUGHES. 62, Palace Road, Tulse Hill.

DR. BRUSHFIELD'S interesting article set me a-thinking. Before the Embankment was made, this lane gloomy, narrow, dark, the sky being visible only here and there between the backs of tall houses led down to the muddy foreshore of the Thames. On the western side was the brick boundary of the Adelphi Arches. At the water's edge a string of barges with connecting gangways led on to the crazy pier from ^vhich the halfpenny boats gallantly set off for London Bridge. An old volume of The Illustrated London Neivs in my possession contains a couple of drawings of the explosion of the Cricket, as mentioned by DR. BRUSHFIELD ; there is also an account of the inquest, at which it was stated that the engineer used to wedge down the safety valve with a baton of wood ! But this accident did not terminate the heroic halfpenny service in 1847, as stated by DR. BRUSHFIELD, although the accident may of course have interrupted it. The service was certainly a going concern (Jupiter and Venus being names of two of the boats) at least ten years later, as I frequently, as a boy with heart aglow, made the water journey about 1857, perhaps a little later. I saw a day or two ago that the iron post and the top hinge of the gate that gave entrance to the lane from the Strand still cling to the wall of the shop immediately west of the Cecil Hotel.

A yard or two to the east (or the west ?) of the steamboat pier in question was another barge, moored in front of " The Fox under the Hill." "The Fox" was a waterside public-house, on the floating barge moored in front of which were tables and benches at which tired man might recuperate. In the fifties I was a " reading boy " at a large printing office in the neighbourhood, and in summer-time I often dined on the floating palace happily if not sumptuously ! It was to " The Fox " that the boy Dickens must have picked his steps by way of the foreshore at low tide from the blacking warehouse in Hungerford Market (now Charing Cross Station) ; for he describes the resort and its customers in one of his works (possibly in his ' Sketches ' ?).

Immediately to the west of Ivy Lane still, of course, remain the Adelphi Arches often called the Dark Arches. The principal arch yawns off South Strand (Durham Street, near Dent's clock and opposite Bedford Street). Through these arches, in pre Em- bankment days, one could reach the river. I had not entered them for nearly fifty years, but looked through them when passing the other day. I found that the western arch, which originally opened into a side street, was bricked up ; but one could come in view of the Embankment, though there was no through way.

W. J. FITZSIMMONS. Cromwell Avenue, Highgate.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 th S v. 108).

Is there never a chink in the world above

Where they listen for [not " to "] words from below ?

is from a song in Jean Ingelow's poem 'Supper at the Mill.' W. H. CUMMINGS. [Several correspondents refer to Miss Ingelow.]

I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow

is from 'James Lee's Wife,' one of Browning's ' Dramatis Persona?.' J. B. DOUGLAS.

WILLIAM ETTY (10 th S. v. 88). Until, perhaps, twenty years ago, a niece of Etty's, Mrs. Robert Smithson, was living in York. She left children, and I believe that one of her sons is now resident at Kitchen. I was given to understand that Mrs. Smithson represented the third volume of the Betsey or Bessy who lived for about a quarter of a century with her painter uncle and was his "domestic all-in-all." See Gilchrist's 'Life of William Etty, 11. A.' vol. i. p. 222. In the preface to that work Mrs. "Bennington" of * N. & Q.' appears as Mrs. Binnington.

ST. SWITHIN.

NELSON EELIC IN CORSICA (10 th S. v. 89). I venture to suggest that there has been some error in the report of Mr. Norgate's lecture, for I do not see how or when Nelson could possibly have made any presentation to a church in Corsica. Certainly he could not have done so when he was in the Medi- terranean as Commander-in-Chief, 1803-5. On the other hand, he did at that time pre- sent articles of silver to some of the churches along the north coast of Sardinia, and, in particular, to the church at Maddalena, a cross and two candlesticks. (See 'Nelson' in "Men of Action Series," p. 193.) It seems not improbable that this is what Mr. Nor- gate referred to. J. K. LAUGHTON.