Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/475

. v. MAY 19, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

391

Miss Strickland in her life of Queen Anne

states :

"She [Duchess of Maryborough] wrote to her [Mrs. Mashani, formerly Abigail Hill] an angry letter from Woodstock Palace. The superior style of the answer astonished her, and she became con- vinced that the serving-maid kinswoman had been prompted by her other cousin, the statesman Harley."

The relationship between these historic personages established by the foregoing extracts comes, as suggested by MR. RELTON, through the family of Stephens of East- ington, Gloucestershire, and is shown in the chart pedigree which I have drawn up.

If any of your contributors or readers would answer R. H. E. H.'s first and second questions, and could state to which branch of the large family of the Hills William and his son Francis belonged, many of your readers, with myself, would no doubt be obliged-. R. C. BOSTOCK.

[MR. BOSTOCK'S chart pedigree is far too exten- sive for the pages of 'N. & Q.' ; we have con- sequently forwarded it to MR. RELTON.]

DICKENS ON THE BIBLE (10 th S. v. 304, 355). As I happen to be the custodian, by heredity, of what has been clearly ascertained to be the actually last letter of Charles Dickens, it seems incumbent on me to say that a partial reply to MR. MACRAE'S note may be found in a letter of mine, dated

4 April, printed in The Pall Mall Gazette. It may be added that my late father, the addressee of this last letter, was living at Highgate at the date of Dickens's death, and that many of his books were afterwards dis- persed. This, to my thinking, sufficiently accounts for the Upper Holloway fairy tale, unless, as I have suggested in that letter, The Daily Neivs and The Daily Chronicle the journals which, so far as I am aware, were the first to herald this portentous " find " were elaborately hoaxed, on 1-2 April, be it noted. I, as in duty bound, if only for the protection of collectors, at once supplied The Daily Neivs with the facts, within a few hours of the announcement (which has since made pretty well the round of the presp, it seems) ; but the correction has not, to my surprise, yet seen light in its columns. It appears to me that, au contraire, it is the interesting letter to MR. MACRAE which will be new to most Dickensians; and it is odd that that gentleman, while hinting (apparently in error) that his own letter is referred to in Forster's 'Life/ should have overlooked the fact that the letter of

5 June, 1870, appears in extenso in that book,

besides being facsimiled in another well- known volume of Dickens's correspondence.

REED MAKEHAM. 24, Melfort Road, Norbury, S.VV.

MR. MACRAE may like to know that I paid a visit to Mr. Hartley, the bookseller of Junction Road, Holloway, to whom the volume was taken which contained the pre- sumed original letter of Dickens. On making inquiries, Mr. Hartley found that the original letter is at the British Museum. He kindly showed me this copy, which is for sale.

WILLIAM WALE.

112, South Hill Park, Hampstead, N.W.

The letter referred to by MR. MACRAE was given in evtenso on pp. 362-3 of John Camden Hotten's book ' Charles Dickens : the Story of his Life,' the preface of which is dated 29 June, 1870. Mr. Frank T. Marzials quotes a paragraph from the same letter on p. 159 of his 'Life of Charles Dickens' ("Great Writers Series "). JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington. Warwickshire.

WATERLOO VETERAN (10 th S. iv. 347, 391, 493). John Stacey, mentioned at the last reference, was an old soldier in a double sense : he was not at Waterloo, nor was he ninety-six in 1894. His statements have been several times refuted.

In 1896 he turned up at Nottingham Workhouse, and the guardians, accepting his story that he was a Waterloo veteran and aged ninety-nine, ordered him special privileges. A neighbouring gentleman sent a carriage and pair, and had him con- veyed to one of his almshouses, where he made every arrangement for the old man's comfort. Meanwhile the clerk to the guardians had been in communication with the War Office, with the result that the man's impudent imposture was exposed. It is only necessary to say that he joined the 14th Light Dragoons in 1839, giving his age as nineteen, which would make 1820 the year of his birth. This is quite sufficient to destroy any claim to the title of Waterloo veteran ; it is therefore unnecessary to go through the other points in his story, which on investigation were found equally without foundation, E. G. B.

Louis PHILIPPE'S LANDING IN ENGLAND (10 th S. v. 349). The ex-King's retirement from Paris was attended by numerous inter- ruptions and difficulties, and he did not reach the coast until 2 March, 1848 (the Due de Nemours reached Folkestone on 27 Feb- ruary). The Brighton and Continental Steam Packet Company sent three vessels across