Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/427

 10 s. VIL MAY 4, 190?.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

in Kent and Sussex,' 1858, p. 108 (in the account of Knole), is the following :

" The Venetian Bedroom remains as it was fitted up for the ambassador Molino, after whom it is

named In the Dressing-room are Miss Axford,

the fair Quakeress, by Reynolds ; and a good por- trait by Gainsborough."

According to the 1892 edition of the * Hand- book,' these two portraits are in the Crimson Drawing-room. Lord Saekville is the owner of Knole.

Bifrons is, or was, according to the Vicarage of Patrixbourne, which is on the Little' Stour river or " bourn," half a mile from Bridge :
 * Handbook ' quoted above, adjoining the

"In the drawing-room is a fine full length of George IV. by Lawrence. Along the front a Mr. Taylor, who rebuilt it in 1770, placed this inscrip- tion ' in commendation of his wife ' : ' Diruta sedificat uxor bona, sedih'cata diruit mala.' " According to ' Paterson's Roads,' 18th ed., by Edward Mogg, 1826, p. 3, the occupant of Bifrons was then Edw. Taylor, Esq.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

" MATCHES " IN CONGREVE (10 S. vii. 269). The association of matches with tinder- boxes in the quotation from ' Love for Love ' seems natural enough, for surely tinder- boxes were of no service without matches those sulphur-tipped splints of thin wood, which kindled into flame on application to the rag-tinder already ignited by sparks from the flint.

Genuine old sulphur-tipped matches are harder to find than tinder-boxes ; indeed, the latter are made at the present day, not to sell as curios, though that may be the fate of many, but for use by some of the peasant class in Holland and elsewhere.

The tip of the lucifer match mentioned in Haydn, introduced about 1834, I presume was furnished with composition igniting by friction quite a different article from the old sulphur tip. I. CHALKLEY GOULD.

There used to be, fifty to sixty years ago, slips of white wood tipped with sulphur for getting a light from a fire, &c. Perhaps they were the same as those used with the tinder-box. There were also, and probably are now, slips of cedarwood. Both of these were, I think, called matches.

Is not " to break into matchwood " an old phrase for " to break into little pieces " ? ROBERT PIERPOINT.

Matches are not necessarily lucifer matches. The old tinder-boxes always contained matches tipped with sulphur to catch the

long-sought spark on the tinder. The lucifer (phosphorus) matches, producing a real flame themselves, were introduced about 1830, and were a great advance in the art of fire-producing ; but surely the old sulphur matches are as old as the tinder- boxes themselves, for without them the tinder would have been useless.

J. FOSTER PALMER. 8, Royal Avenue, S.W.

The matches here alluded to are evi- dently the thin slips of wood tipped at each end with sulphur which were used with tinder-boxes until the latter went out of use. When a spark ignited the tinder, the sulphur match was put on to the little ring of fire, and blown upon until it caught and set light to the wood. The making of these matches was a gipsy industry. Genuine old ones are not often met with nowadays, but they are easy enough to make. I have often made them to demonstrate the way of using a tinder-box. E. E. STREET.

The old tinder-box contained a flint, a steel, a quantity of tinder, and some matches. The matches were of the same shape and size as those now in use, but were tipped only with sulphur, and of course did not ignite by friction. By the striking together of the flint and steel, sparks fell on the tinder, and where they fell the tinder ignited, and was for some minutes like the red coals in a grate. A match was ignited by touching the sulphur tip on one of these red spots. Matches are referred to in The Spectator, but I cannot point out the exact passage, as I have not the book at hand.

M. N. G.

Although suggestive of an early name for friction matches namely, " Congreves " (so termedfrom the famous rocket manufacturer), the matches referred to in ' Love for Love ' would be the ordinary ones made of thin slips of pinewood or pasteboard, dipped in brimstone at both ends, and used with the tinder-box. Although mostly made at home on Saturday evenings, when the week's tinder was prepared, they were also manu- factured for sale and hawked about in country places. A peripatetic vendor of them, being repulsed by a villager with the remark, " No, we never buy of strangers," meekly replied, " Be not forgetful to enter- tain strangers, for thereby some have enter- tained angels unawares ! " but was crushed by the retort, " Get out ! Angels don't come round with brimstone matches."

RICHD. WELFORD. Newcastle-upon-Tyne.