Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/494

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL MAY 25, 1907.

and only surviving son of this marriage Charles Boothby Skrymsher, was the objec of H. T. B.'s inquiries. The date of hi birth is not known. By royal sign-manual dated 3 Dec., 1792, he took the name am arms of Clopton only, under the will of hi relative Frances Partheriche, to whom h was next heir. He died unmarried or 27 July, 1800. According to Nichol ('Leicestershire,' vol. iv. p. 178, foot-note) he

'" was a well-bred, intelligent, and amiable man ; a .great frequenter of the subscription houses ; and from his eccentricity in dress, was usually style< Prince Boothby. The late duke of Rutland, 'the earls of Carlisle and Derby, and Mr. Fox were among the number of his particular friends anc acquaintance."

In his will, an abstract of which I print in my volume on ' The Reades of Blackwood Hill and Dr. Johnson's Ancestry,' he is styled Charles Boothby Clopton, of Clarges Street, Middlesex, Esq. He leaves 5,OOOZ "to my friend Miss Elizabeth Darby," as well as all his books, plate, and householc goods in Clarges Street, and at Swaffham, Norfolk, and three half-length pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He appoints as one of his trustees Hugo Meynell, of Bradley, the celebrated sportsman, who in 1758 had married his eldest sister, Anne Boothby Skrymsher. It would seem as though, in Ms social relations, he preferred to be known as Mr. " Boothby."

At the second reference M. N. G. relates an incident concerning " Prince " Boothby, to the effect that an old lady, a complete stranger to him, was so much touched by his chivalric courtesy that she bequeathed him a fortune. This is probably a mere romance, sprung from the fact of his in- heriting the property of his kinswoman Frances Partheriche.

i ALEYN LYELL READE.

Park Corner, Blundellsands, near Liverpool.

DICKENS AND FTJRNIVAL'S INN. The buildings of the Prudential Assurance Company are on the site of FurnivaPs Inn, where Diokens wrote the first portion of

Pickwick.' The directors have set up in the great entrance archway facing the old chambers where Boz wrote a bust and tablet, the former the work of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, the latter from a design by Mr. Paul Waterhouse. The inscription runs :

." Charles Dickens, novelist, born 1812, died 1870. .Lived tor a time in Furnival's Inn, close to this spot, and there wrote ' Pickwick,' in the year 1836. Fitel Id modelled and Panted by Percy

Dickens was four years at Furnival's Inn first at No. 13, then at No. 15, though he did not reside there all the time.

A. P. M.

DICKENS AND EURIPIDES.

" If ever you gets to up'ards o' fifty, and feels disposed to go a-marryin' anybody no matter who jist you shut yourself up in your own room, if you 've got one, and pison yourself off - hand. Hangin 's wulgar, so don t you have nothin' to say to that. Pison yourself, Samivel my boy, pison yourself, and you '11 be glad on it arterwards." ' Pickwick,' chap, xxiii. p. 238, ed. 1837.

Thus the elder Mr. Weller to his son. More than two thousand years ago Euripides, by the mouth of Helen, had expressed the same opinion on hanging, when he is casting about for a possible solution to an ill-matched union. He prefers a dagger to a cord : oral/ TTOCTIS

KOL TO aya6 8' 'xowii/ evyei/ TI KCU KaAoV.

Eur. > Hel.' 296-301.

"When a woman is mated with a man she hates, even life is hateful. To die is best. How then iould I die with honour ? Strangulation in mid-air s unseemly a thing deemed base even among slaves. A sword-thrust hath something in it noble ind honourable."

" Bad form," if it were not a slang ex- pression, would be just the rendering of to-x^/Aoi/es here. FREDERICK B. FIRMAN.

Castleacre, Swaffiham, Norfolk.

THE GREAT WHEEL AT EARL'S COURT. n Engineering for 26 April there appears an llustrated account of the demolition of the Great Wheel, an undertaking that required nuch foresight and skill, as all the parts were eparated while in suspension. The Wheel erved as a notable landmark for upwards of welve years (1895-1907). Erected at a ost of 60,000?., it measured 300 ft. in dia- aeter, and weighed, with its 40 cars in >osition, about 1,000 tons. The axle was ituated at a level of 180 ft. above the ground ; nd the cable used for revolving the Wheel ad an aggregate length of 2,100 ft. and weighed in all about 32 tons. Once in its early days the occupants of e cars endured an all-night sitting, the Vheel having stopped. In the morning ortune turned the wheel, and all was well. his novel occurrence was much talked about t the time, and by way of attracting the ublic the proprietors offered compensation pon a repetition of a similar accident.

TOM JONES.