Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/33

 us. m. JAN. u, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

27

Spectacles en France),' the best compilation of the kind published in the eighteenth century ; and it has no place among the operas in Flix Clement's * Dictionnaire des Operas,' issued near the end of the nine- teenth century.

In October of the same year I went over to Paris for a few days, and met the late M. Victorien Sardou at the Cafe" Tortoni, on the Boulevard des Italiens, after he had been attending a rehearsal of a new play at one of the theatres close by. In the course of our conversation I mentioned to him the passage in Longfellow's ' Hyperion.' M. Sardou smiled, and said he had been asked the same question by many American visitors who had been introduced to him, and he had received several letters on the subject from unknown admirers in the United States. He had come to the con- clusion that it was one of the few literary sins the charming American poet would have to answer for at the Day of Judgment.

Perhaps some reader of ' N. & Q.' can give information about a work of Dufresny which has eluded the search of Dr. Karkeek, M. Sardou, and myself. It is true that Dufresny married as his second wife a laundress, and Le Sage has made this one of the incidents of his novel * Le Diable Boiteux.' Dufresny, however, was by no means the literary martyr one would suppose on reading Longfellow's ' Hyperion.' As the Abb6 de Castres said : "II avoit deux passions qui devoroinent tout, 1' amour de la table et celui des femmes."

ANDBEW DE TEBNANT. 25, Speenham Road, Brixton, S.W.

WE must request corresp9ndents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

SOPHIE DAWES, BABONNE DE FEUCHEBES Will some correspondent refer me to the fullest account of the life of this notorious person before she met the Due de Bourbon, and after his death when she returned to England ? I already have a full account of her extraordinary life in France, and I am most anxious to get more particulars of her English career, parentage, childhood, and her life in Hants and in London on her return to England. The ' D.N.B.' states that she died in Hyde Park Square, 2 Janu- ary, 1841, and that she had also a house in

Hampshire. I should like to know where she lived in that county. From documents in Somerset House I find that she died at Great Cumberland Street on 15 December, 1840. It is known that Baron Gerard painted two portraits of her in 1829 and 1830. I much wish to trace these portraits, and any other portrait of her, if such exists. She was born in St. Helens, Isle of Wight, the year being variously stated as 1785, 1790, and 1792. Letters of administration were granted in February, 1843, to James Daw or Dawes of St. Helen's, Isle of Wight, Mary Ann Clark of 5, Hyde Park Square, and Charlotte Thanaron, resident in France, her brother and sisters, who in- herited most of her great wealth. Is any- thing known of them or their descendants ?

JOHN LANE.

Miss WYKEHAM, BABONESS WENMAN. Can any reader direct my attention to the best account of Miss Wykeham, to whom the Duke of Clarence is said to have proposed so many times ?

Sophia Elizabeth was the only child of William Richard Wykeham of Swalcliffe. She inherited from her grandmother (Hon. Sophia Wenman) all Lord Wenman's estates in Oxfordshire, including Thame Park. The Duke of Clarence afterwards William IV. was reported to have proposed to her in 1818. He subsequently created her Baroness Wenman, 3 June, 1834. She died unmarried 9 August, 1870.

I should also like to know who her repre- sentatives are, and if there is any portrait of her in existence ; one would like to see the portrait of the lady who so persistently refused to be Queen of England.

JOHN LANE.

Vigo Street, W.

ALDEBMAN WILCOX. Who was this ? Mr. Seccombe in his article on Titus Oates in ' Diet. Nat. Biog.' (xli. 300) writes of " a dinner given by Alderman Wilcox in the city in the summer of 1680," at which Oates and Tonge " disputed their respective claims to the proprietorship of the plot."

It is certain that no person named Wilcox has ever been elected an Alderman of Lon- don, at any rate since the end of the thir- teenth century, nor is such a name preserved amongst those returned to the Court of Aldermen by the wards for the Court's final choice. I imagine the person referred to must have been the " John Wilcox, brewer," elected Sheiiff of London on 28 July, 1673, who " fined off " immediately,