Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/477

 10 s. VIL MAY is, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Hanover Square ' can I identify the exact place or the date of their removal.

Wallis's ' Guide to London' (1814) refers to their exhibition in Leicester Fields (sic), and from that date some mention of the collection occurs in nearly all the guides and " New Pictures " of London, notably those of 1822, 1823, 1824, 1826, 1827. There is no reference to it in Cruchley's ' Picture of London,' 1845, so presumably it was closed prior to that date.

ALECK ABRAHAMS.

39, Hillmarton Road, N.

An interesting account of this exhibition and of Miss Linwood may be found in Chambers's ' Book of Days,' vol. i., with an illustration of the gallery. It used to be one of the sights of London, and I can remember being taken to see it in 1844. In the year after her death the pictures were sold by Christie & Manson, but fetched a comparatively small sum. She died in 1845, at the great age of ninety.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

NAPOLEON'S CARRIAGE: JOSEPH BONA- PARTE'S CARRIAGE (10 S. vii. 170, 236, 313, 357). As to Napoleon's carriage, a full communication to ' N. & Q.' was made in February, 1894 (8 S. v. 142), over the initials below. One passage may perhaps be allowed to be repeated :

"The coachman made an affidavit that year before the Lord Mayor, when the carriage was on show in London, with all the necessary ' saids ' of such a legal document, that he drove the carriage ' from Paris to Waterloo ' (this must have been the lawyer's inaccuracy, as the coachman was never within four miles of the village of Waterloo), and that he was attacked by Prussian lancers as he was thirty paces from the road endeavouring to pass round Genappe ; but he does not mention that the Emperor had been inside, and goes on to identify the valuables allowed to remain in it by its plun- derers."

Pv. B. S.

Both the 13th and 14th Hussars (formerly Light Dragoons) bear " Vittoria " on their standard. The 13th were at Waterloo, but the 14th were not. See Siborne's ' History of the Waterloo Campaign,' vol. ii. (App.) p. 508. T. F. D.

Mr. John George Bishop in ' Brighton in the Olden Time ' says :

"Among the early events of North-Street, there is one worth recording by reason of the excitement it occasioned, namely, the exhibition of Napoleon's carriage (taken at Jemappes, after Waterloo) in the old Castle stables, New Road. The carriage was brought to Brighton by a Mr. Bullock, who had previously exhibited it in London, as he stated, to 100,000 persons. While here, crowds daily nocked

to see it, and to sit in it ; and the sensation it excited elicited we believe from Mr. Rickman (Clio Rickman, as he was called, himself a curiosity) the following lines, which appeared in the Lewes- paper :

What wondrous things are daily brought to view, Produced by Time, and shown by Fortune's.

Six noble horses the great Napoleon drew ; Now, one Bullock draws a hundred thousand asses ! "

JOHN HEBB.

[Reply from MR. PIEKPOINT later.] "ESPRIT DE L'ESCALIER" (10 S. vii. 189, 237, 250, 295). J'ai a remercier M. GAIDOZ de son renseignement, mais les colonnes de V Intermediaire auxquelles il fait allusion ne font qu'attribuer la phrase a Pierre Nicole (voir ante, p. 189), qui 1'aurait dite apropos de M. de Treville, " dont," remarque un correspondant de V Intermediaire, " La Bruyere nous a laisse le portrait sous le nom d'Arsene." Un autre correspondant du meme journal donne la paternite de la phrase a J.-J. Rousseau. " Je n'ai jamai& d'esprit," aurait-il dit, " qu'au bas de 1'escalier."

Je ne demandais pas la signification de la phrase, mais bien son origine. Quant a sa forme, je n'ai fait que la citer telle que je 1'ai rencontree. D'ailleurs, j'ai voulu savoir si " elle est d'un usage courant dans la litter ature frangaise," et il y a quelques jours j'ai trouve qu'il en a ete question dans le Courrier de Vaugelas. Ici (dans le numero du 15 mars, 1879, a la page 10), comme dans V Intermediaire, la phrase est citee de la meme faon, " 1' esprit de 1'escalier," et a ete rencontree, selon un correspondant du premier journal, "dans un des feuilletons dramatiques de M. de La Rounat (Janvier, 1876)." Faute d'une indication plus precise, il m'est, cependant r impossible de verifier 1' exactitude de la citation. Je puis ajouter que ce n'est pas moi qui ai supprime Yl avant " esprit."

Ici s'ouvre une parenthese. Oe ne sais si M. GAIDOZ a une admiration pour la langue anglaise egale a celle que j'ai pour la langue franaise, mais, quoi qu'il en soit, il n'est pas, a mon avis, de meilleur moyen d'affermir et perpetuer " 1'entente cordiale " que par 1' etude reciproque des langues anglaise et franaise. C'est pour ainsi dire son " escalier de (vrai) service," mais sans etre pour cela un " escalier derobe," loin de la. f Jfc fc- : EDWARD LATHAM.

y " POPERY, TYRANNY, AND WOODEN snpEs' ' (10 S. vii. 327). The above ''collocation" (with a trifling alteration) occurs in the Orange toast composed in 1689 for the