Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/483

 n s. VIIL DEC. is, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

477

is a MS., which, bears no indication of sources : it has been compiled evidently from various authorities. But confirma- tion of the accuracy of its Spinks entry is obtainable by reference to the list of subscribers in a little volume, 'Poems, by a Sister,' published in 1812 by J. Walsh, law stationer, Inner Temple Lane, in which the first name under S is that of "Mr. Spinks, Temple." Thanks to SIR HARRY'S communication, we see that this Spinks was not the official superior of Randal Norris in 1794. The suggestion accordingly presents itself that he was his son.

To SIR HARRY'S statement that " Spinks is not spelt ' Spinkes,' " I would add, as a rider, " except by Charles Lamb." I have just taken from among my Lamb auto- graphs the original document in which Lamb, in 1823, "set down his reply to his friend Pitman's inquiry as to the identity of the Mrs. S named on p. 87 of the ' Elia ' volume just then published, and I find it to be " Mrs. Spinkes " quite clearly written, and bearing no trace of the hesitation ap- parent in some of the other entries in the same document.

To SIR HARRY'S quotation from 'The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple' " Hence- forth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records" I. would make this addition from ' The South-Sea House ' :

" Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while perad venture the very names, which I have summoned up before thee, are fantastic insubstantial like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece : Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being." Remembering this, and that Mrs. John Spinks was not " Fanny," but. as SIR HARRY shows, " Mary," I would fain hazard the statement that Lamb's " Weathered " is as far removed as even " Weatherhead " from the actual maiden name of her whose rendering of ' Water parted from the Sea ' had so charmed the lad of Bluecoat days. If it should be found that the Mr. Wall (or Walls) of Paper Buildings, to whom Randal Norris was articled, had a daughter Mary, it would be fairly reasonable, I think, to entertain the probability of Lamb's " Fanny Weatheral " (Mrs. Spinks) having been Mary Wall. J. ROGERS REES.

Salisbury.

In the passage quoted by MR. ROGERS REES at the first reference Lamb says that the songs of Mrs. S " had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats." MR. REES takes the " long

coats " as referring to the long coat worn by the Bluecoat boys, and no doubt he may be right ; but may not " coats " be used here in the earlier meaning of petticoats ? There is a well-known instance of this in ' The Winter's Tale,' I. ii. :

And saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat.

For an instance of the plural see the

amusing account of the breeching of a small

boy of six quoted in Miss Godfrey's ' English

Children in the Olden Time,' p. 182 :

" He looks taler [c] and prettyer than in his

coats So the coats are to be quite left off upon

Sunday."

Was this meaning of " coats " still current in Lamb's time ? It was recognized officially so late as 1827, as in the twenty-ninth edi- tion of ' Walker's Dictionary,' published in that year, the definitions of coat, include " petticoat, the habit of a boy in his infancy, the lower part of a woman's dress." I believe that when Lamb was a child boys still wore long petticoats until they were six years old, the age at which he saw ' Arta- xerxes.'

But even if " coats " be used here in the sense of petticoats, the passage might still refer to Lamb's schooldays, for in winter the Bluecoat boys used to wear a long yellow- petticoat under the blue coat. Further, from a passage in the ' Autobiography ' of Leigh Hunt it would seem that the long skirts of the coat itself were sometimes un- kindly called " petticoats " :

" What she thought of my blue skirts and yellow stockings is not so clear. She did not, however, taunt me with my 'petticoats,' as the girls- in the streets of London would do." New Edition, 1860, p. 87.

Only last year a little boy told me that a schoolfellow of his was called Petticoats a nickname now usually reserved for boys in kilts because his tunic was so long that it came down over his knees and hid his knickerbockers.

On the whole, I would suggest that there may be some doubt as to what Lamb meant bv "long coats." G. H. WHITE.

"St. Cross, Harleston, Norfolk.

PIERRE LOTI: EASTER ISLAND (11 S. v. 469 ; vi. 53). I am now in a position to answer my own query. The description of Easter Island appeared in U Illustration of Paris in three August numbers in 1872, the final instalment being signed " Julien Viaud, aspirant de premiere classe." The articles themselves are described as " Journal d'un sous-officier de 1'etat-major de La Flore." L. L. K.