Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/238

 230

NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. MAR. 19, 1910.

New London, l iv. 49 ; Steele alludes to it in * The Lying Lover ' 1703, II. ii., and Congreve's ' The Way of the World,' 1700, I. i. G. L. APPERSON.

In 'The Tatler,' No. 170 (11 May, 1710), an advertisement appears in which Philander desires Clarinda

"would condescend to meet him the same day at Eight in the Evening at Rosamond's Pond, faithfully protesting that in case she would not do him that Honour, she might see the Body of the said Philander the next day floating on the said Lake of Love." A. L. MAYHEW. 21, Norham Road, Oxford.

The allusion is fully explained in an admirable and valuable work by Prof. Hales, entitled ' Longer English Poems l (Macmillan). This book contains ' The Rape of the Lock * and many other poems, all with copious notes. The lake cannot now be found, because it was filled up in 1770 ; but it was " near where now stand the Wellington Barracks.' 1 It was a place of assignation, whence probably its romantic name, and is referred to by Otway, Con- greve, Farquhar, Colley Gibber, and lastly by Swift (Letter to Stella, 31 Jan., 1710/11). There is a woodcut of it in Knight's ' Old England,' picture No. 2397. This picture is dated 1752.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

Bishop Warburton in one of his letters to Hurd writes of Rosamond's Pond as " long consecrated to disastrous love and elegiac poetry." The following more explicit reference is from ' Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century,'- by the late Wm. Forsyth, Q.C. (1871) :

" The usual mode of conveyance was with a chair and ladies, when they wished to preserve an incog nito, went abroad in masks. It is in this disguise that Flora Mellasin [in Mrs. Hay wood's ' History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless,' 1751] meets Trueworth by appointment ' at General Tatten's bench opposite Rosamond's pond, in St. James's Park.' Rosamond's pond had rather a bad reputation, both as the scene of assignations and a place for suicide. In Southern' play of ' The Maid's Last Prayer,' acted in 1693, when Granger says to Lady Trickett that he did not see her at Rosamond's pond, she exclaims : ' Me ! fie fie, a married woman there, Mr. Granger ! ' Wha has become of General Tatten's bench I know not but Rosamond'8 pond was filled up in 1770 b\
 * Capability' Brown."

W. B. H.

Rosamond's Pond was, as Bishop War burton wrote to Hurd, ' ' long consecrated to disastrous love and elegiac poetry " but, especially as a result of the terribL storm of 1 Sept., 1768, when it and the

.eighbouring canal overflowed their banks, t became " a shameful nuisance." Attempts were made from time to time to drain it, ut the drains burst more than once, causing numerous accidents, and inspiring George elwyn to remark that " the Park and the Uivil List were in the same condition, for -here were a number of useless and ex- pensive drains on both of them.' 1 The )ond was, however, entirely filled up and )he ground levelled in the spring of 1770 >y order of George III., who had not long Before acquired Buckingham House close by. There are some fine views of it in the amous Jerningham collection of prints llustrating St. James's Park, now open to the public at Kensington Palace.

ALAN STEWART.

There was a Rosamund's Well in the grounds of Blenheim, which in Henry II. 's ime was a royal demesne. Beside it the air Clifford and her lover were said to have exchanged their vows, and it became a favourite rendezvous for enamoured Wood- stock couples. W. T.

[MR. F. C. FROST and MR. E. STUART SHERSON also thanked for replies.]

THE BALTIMORE AND * * OLD MORTALITY :1 PATTERSONS (10 S. xi. 25, 218). As the pedigree of this family, as given in ' Carlyle's First Love, 1 Appendix A, is incomplete, and in one particular misleading, it rests with me, as a descendant of the incompleted portion, to correct the same.

According to his will (proved 1801), John Patterson of Millbrook, co. Sligo, Esq. (= Margaret Patterson, the aunt of Betty Patterson who married Jerome Bonaparte), left four sons and five daughters, viz., John, Edward, William, and Daniel; Jane (wife of Daniel Merry, Esq.), Ann, Margaret, Lucy, and Frances (married the Rev. G. V. Hart of Glenalla, co. Donegal, and curate of Castlebar, co. Sligo). It is the last item which proves my statement in ' Hart of Donegal ? (p. 69) regarding the relationship between my grandmother Frances Hart and "Betty." But as Rear- Admiral Hart was the only one of that name hitherto men- tioned in the Patterson pedigree, it would have proved misleading in the future, with- out the addition I have now made.

All the references regarding the in- formation about Rear- Admiral George Hart and his family I possess, the information having been furnished to MR.- ARCHIBALD, but without my permission.

E. H. FAIRBROTHER.