Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/201

 ii s. viii. SEPT. G, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

195

silk table-covers in this work, made both o white and coloured threads, and of silk o various shades. The ground, as we learn from a poem on lads affixed to the pattern book of " Milour Mignerak," was made b^ beginning a single stitch, and increasing stitch on each side until the required size was obtained. If a strip or long border w r a to be made, the netting was continued to it prescribed length, and then finished off reducing a stitch on each side till it wa decreased to one, as garden nets are made at the present day.

This plain netted ground was called reseau rezel, rezeuil, and was much used for bed curtains, valances, &c. When the reseau was decorated with a pattern it was termec lads, or darned netting, the Italian puntc ricatnato a maglia quadra, and, combined wit! point- coupe, was much used for bed-furniture It appears to have been much employed for church-work for the sacred emblems. The lamb and the pelican are frequently repre sented.

The armorial shield of the family, coronets monograms, the beasts of the Apocalypse with fleurs-de-lis and sacres cceurs, for the most part adorned those pieces destined for the use of the Church. If, on the other hand, intended for a pall, death's-heads, cross- bones, and tears, with the sacramental cup, left no doubt of the destination of the article. Vide Mrs. Palliser, ' History of Lace,' chap, ii., on ' Cut- Work.'

TOM JONES.

JAMES LACKINGTON THE BOOKSELLER (US. viii. 125). If I am not mistaken, the book entitled " Lackington's Confessions ... .by Allan Macleod. Esq. B. Crosby & Co., 1804," is not by Lackington at all, but was written in ridicule of the book by him, of which the following is the title :

" The Confessions of J. Lackington, late Book- pellcr, at the Temple of the Muses, in a Series of Letters to a Friend. To which are added, Two Let 1 cis on the Bad Consequences of Having Daughters educated at Boarding Schools." My copy the second edition bears the imprint " London : Printed and Sold by Richard Edwards, Crane Court, Fleet Street, for the Author. 1804." Opposite the title-page I find I had copied out in manu- script the title-page of the book mentioned by MR. ABRAHAMS, to which I have added : ' Written in ridicule of Lackington's book. Partly in verse. A very futile perform- ance." I presume this is based upon my haying seen a copy of the book at the British Museum, but I cannot now say.

W. H. PEET.

CLOUET (11 S. viii. 109, 156). Clouet was in the Duke of Newcastle's service as early as 1742, leaving him some time before 1753 to become tnaitre a" hotel to the spend- thrift Earl of Albemarle, then Ambassador at Paris. This nobleman died in 1754, and before the publication of Yerral's book in 1759 Clouet entered the household of the Marechal Richelieu in the same capacity, beyond which point in his career I have not followed him.

Clouet was the leading chef of his time. Walpole mentions him twice in his Letters (ed. Toynbee), and once in The World, and Gray in the line quoted at the first reference above. His name also appears in the letter to the Duke of Graf ton about Fielding's ' Miss Lucy in Town.' In all these cases he is referred to not so much as an individual as the temporary type of the extravagant, highly paid " prince of the kitchen " which only the highest stratum of the nobility could keep. That he was extravagant Verral, in the account of Clouet which pre- cedes his recipes, is at pains to contradict. Nevertheless, one reads in the press of the time the story of his boiling down twenty- five Westphalian hams for the sake of the half-pint of quintessence thereby obtained, and other similar stories of him were current.

The Duke of Newcastle's Sussex seats were Halland in East Hoathly and Bishop- stone Place, near Seaford, both demolished and disparked at about the end of the eighteenth century. (Stanmer was, and still is. the residence of a younger line of the Pelham family, now represented by the Earl of Chichester.) But, though Clouet doubtless officiated in the country when the Duke visited Sussex for any length of time, his culinary reputation must have been made at Newcastle House, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is not so much the proximity of the Duke's country seats to Lewes as the fact that the Verral family were sup- porters of the Pelham interests, and enjoyed x to no inconsiderable extent) the Duke's Drivate and official patronage, that accounts or Verral entering the ducal kitchen to earn his trade ; and he is quite as likely to lave done so in London as in the country.

William Verral was a son of Richard Verral, master of " The White Hart " Inn it Lewes, and was born in 1715. His father died in 1737, and then or soon after (at any ate before 1740) he succeeded to the same stablishment, remaining there until his eath a bankrupt in 1761. There is at east one other copy of his ' Complete System f Cookery ' besides the one which belonged