Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/306

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL MARCH 30, 1907.

the white hart ; and every one of the eleven angels wears a similar jewel in honour of the King. This badge occurs in addition on the panel at the back of the painting, which would be shown when the picture was closed.

The white hart may further be seen on the beautiful frame of Richard's great portrait in Westminster Abbey ; on the robes (copied in his lifetime from his actual garments) worn by his effigy on his tomb in the same church ; and on a fragment of the royal dress at South Kensington Museum, which also shows his grandfather's cognizance (the sunburst of Edward III.) and the portrait of his dog Math. A. R. BAYLEY.

In Boutell's ' English Heraldry,' second ed., published by Cassell, Fetter & Galpin, p. 27, it is stated that

"in Westminster Abbey the favourite badge of Richard II., a white hart, chained, and in an atti- tude of rest, is repeated as many as eighty-three times, and all are equally consistent with heraldic truth, without any one of them being an exact counterpart of the other."

Millington, at p. 303 of ' Heraldry in His- tory, Poetry, and Romance,' remarks that Richard II. derived from his mother, the Fair Maid of Kent,

" the badge preserved in Westminster Hall, and in the chapel of St. Michael in Canterbury Cathedral, a white hart, couchant on a mount, under a tree proper, gorged with a crown, and chained; and that this badge became the title of a pursuivant, and is alluded to as the ' King's liverie ' in an old chronicle entitled 'How England was first called Albyon.'"

JAMES WATSON. Folkestone.

According to Brewer, the white hart, or hind, was the badge of Richard II., and was worn by all his courtiers and adherents. When the unsuccessful rising on his behalf took place, his child wife, Isabel of France, tore off the Lancastrian badges I believe swans from her liveries, and replaced them, with delight, by the white hart.

HELGA.

A white hart was the favourite badge of Richard II. His arms were Azure, a cross fleury between five martlets or, for Edward the Confessor, impaling France and England quarterly, for England. T. F. D.

A stag, or rather a " white hart," does not appear in the arms of Richard II. ; but it was that monarch's favourite device, used as a badge.

The device may, I think, be seen on the tomb of the Duke of Norfolk in St. Mark's, Venice; and it also forms a conspicuous

decoration of the moulding under the windows of Westminster Hall. It was not, however, the King's only device employed as a cognizance. Among others were the Plantagenista, the sun in splendour, the peas-cod, and the white falcon.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

[MR. J. K. NUTTALL also thanked for reply.]

"ESPRIT DE L'ESCALIER " (10 S. vii. 189, 237). We say, in French, esprit d'escalier, literally " staircase-wit." Esprit de Vescalier, with the article, would refer to a certain staircase for instance, to MR. LATHAM'S own staircase. The word is familiar with us, to express the reverse of what our friend Punch sometimes calls in his cartoons " Words one should have left unsaid." It means the appropriate answer which one thinks of too late, when one has taken leave and goes down the staircase with an after- thought. Would not " afterthought " do as translation of the French esprit d'escalier ?

The French expression was literally trans- lated into German, but not appropriately, by W. L. Hertslet. This Hertslet was a German writer, although of English extrac- tion, as the name shows. He wrote a book ' Der Treppenwitz der Weltgeschichte.' Allured by the title, I ordered the book some time ago, and received the sixth edition (Berlin, 1905), revised and enlarged, after the death of the author, by H. F. Helmolt. But I was rather deceived, because I found only a very few instances of real esprit d'escalier in the French sense of the word. The book chiefly deals with historical sayings and anecdotes which are to be read in many handbooks. Neverthe- less the book is worth perusal, and I learned from it a definition of the word " diplo- mats " which was unknown to me.

I was glad to see that this is an English definition, not a French one : " Men sent abroad to lie for the benefit of their country." It was made by Sir Henry Wotton (1568- 1639), and is quoted by Hertslet (sixth ed., p. 379) in a paragraph where the author comments on the French saying " perfide Albion " ; and I may observe that Hertslet quotes this saying with approval. But in the present days I leave the controversy on this word to German and English news- papers. With us Frenchmen the expression is antiquated in these days of entente cordiale.

H. GAIDOZ.

22, Rue Servandoni, Paris (VI e ).

P.S. I look into the ' Table Generate de I'lntermediaire (1864-1896),' and I find :