Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/453

 ii s. xii. DEC. 4, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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round the bed strangely. ' Not a bad one, is it ? ' says the doctor. The patient shook his head, rubbed his trembling hand upon his stomach, bolted the oyster, and fell back dead. They buried him in the prison yard, and paved his grave with oyster shells."

Some weeks later Dickens indited a further letter to the Professo a propos of a book he heard he was writing :

" What is it called ? Sometimes I imagine the title-page thus :

Oysters

in Every style

or Openings of Life

Young Dando."

John Dando, the Jew, was a very real entity. Frequent references to his habit of taking free meals at coffee-houses are to be found in the columns of BelVsLife in London, in 1836 especially, and, strange to say, this particular offence seemed to be outside the pale of the law at that period, at any rate for some time a circumstance that evoked much comment.

Dando's capacity, however, for consuming the succulent bivalve fades into insignificance by comparison with that of a Tuam man, as reported in BelVs Life in London of 27 November, strange to say, in the same year 1842 under the heading of ' A Monstrous Feat.' The individual in question wagered a pound that he would eat six hundred oysters and drink two bottles of porter. He succeeded in eating five hundred and eighty- five oysters and drank the porter, but lost his wager by being unable to finish the last fifteen. This performance, to the best of my knowledge, constitutes a record.

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

Macaulay in his diary under 27 April, 1850, notes that he played with a little niece : " I was Dando at a pastrycook's, and then at an oyster-shop." Sir G. O. Trevelyan adds the marginal comment :

" A generation has arisen of whom not one in fifty knows Dando ; the ' bouncing seedy swell ' ; hero of a hundred ballads ; who was at least twice in every month brought before the magistrates for having refused to settle his bill after over- eating himself in an oyster-shop."

Dando had not only the honour of being impersonated by the great historian. He is the hero, or villain, of Thackeray's * The Professor : a Tale of Sentiment,' that first appeared, over the name of Goliah Gahagan, in Bentley's Miscellany, vol. ii., 1837, according to Mr. J. P. Anderson's Biblio- graphy. EDWARD BENSLY.

FATHER JOHN AND DR. BACON (US. xii. 401). Father John was Dom John Northall alias Meutisse, who died 5 May, 1666, and of whom Dom Henry Norbert Birt in his ' Obit Book of the English Benedictines ' (privately printed, 1913) gives the following account :

" Born in Shropshire. Educated at St. Gregory's [Douay] under name of Meutisse. Professed at Douay, 12 April, 1626. Went to St. Edmund's, Paris. Vicar of nuns at Cambray, 1633-41. Secretary to General Chapter, 1639. Prior of St. Gregory's, 1641-53. Prior of St. Malo, 1653-57. Cathedral Prior of Norwich, 1645. Sent to the English Mission. Retired in old age to Douay, where he died. Author of MS. treatise now in the Lille Archives : 13 letters, ' These things that follow are some advices given by fa. John Mutasse to some religious when he was confessour.' "

I should think that Dr. Bacon was the " Richardus Bacon, pharmacopeia," men- tioned in the two following extracts from the Third Douay Diary (Cath. Rec. Soc. Publ. vol. x. pp. 277-8, 305) :

" 8 Septembris [1629] ex Anglia venit Richard us Bacon (hie Robertus Boyer) a Richardo Bacon, pharmacopeia, et Joanna Catholicis in parochia S* 1 Dunstani in platea de Fleete-Streete, Londini, natus. In monasterio Westmonasterii studuit semper, ultimo anno excepto, quo Cantabrigise enutritus est. In hoc nostrum Collegium anno setatis suse 18 et amplius pro 240 flor. annue admittitur. Poesim frequenta- turus."

" 27 Julii [1632], ex Anglia advenit Matthseus Bacon (hie Boyer) films Richardi Bacon, Pharma- copolse, et Joannse, qui multa pro fide Caholica passi sunt. Natus est Londini in parochia S* 1 Dunstani in comitatu Midlesexiae. In West- monasteriensi schola aliquibus annis educatus. In convictores nostros pro 200 florenis annue admissus, setatis suse anno 16. Grammaticam frequentat."

Can G. F. R. B. throw any further light on the position in life and ancestry of the father of the two Old Westminsters mentioned above ?

It is probably to this Richard Bacon that the following extract from the First Douay Diary (' Records of the English Catholics/ vol. i. p. 163) refers :

" Die 8 [Aprilis 1580] in Angliam profectus est Baconus quidam Londinensis, qui partim ufc amicos hie degentes inviseret paulo ante festum Paschalis hue se contulit, partim vero ut sacram eucharistiam perciperet, sacris concionibus in- teresset et solenniter omnia in ecclesia adminis- trata videret, quae in Anglia nonnisi in angelis videre licuit et locis secretioribus : tantus ab haeref 8 cathol' 8 metus injicitur."

One Richard Bacon of Stifcay, Norfolk, had a daughter Catherine, who married Sir Henry Waldegrave of Staininghall, Norfolk, and Navestock, Essex, 2nd Bart.