Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/151

 ii s. iv. AUG, 19, i9iL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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and the Editor of The Cornhill Magazine in the garden of the Middle Temple, and in the Hall adjoining there was a concert by Mr. William Forington and choristers and ex- choristers of the Temple Church, under the direction of Dr. H. Walford Davies. The concert opened with the well-known passage from Ecclesiasticus, " Let us now praise famous men," the music specially written by Dr. Davies, followed by ' At the Church Gate,' ' The Mahogany Tree,' and ' Little Billee.' Col. Newcome's song ' Wapping Old Stairs ' was also included. Selections from ' The Newcomes ' and ' Pendennis ' were read by Mr. Cyril Maude. The concert closed with that good old seventeenth- century Royalist song ' Here 's a Health unto His Majesty.'

There can be no doubt that the cele- bration, so appropriate in every way, will not only do much to increase the interest in the writings of the novelist a,nd poet, but will also lead to a better understanding of the man himself. Nothing in life is easier than to call people names, and when the word was passed, " Thackeray is a cynic," thousands at once caught the word, and so regarded him. Tom Taylor well answered this in his memorial poem in Punch : He \vas a cynic ! by his life all wrought

Of generous acts', mild words, and gentle ways ; His heart wide open to all kindly thought,

His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise !

These notes have caused me to make many searches, and the more search I have made the more my affection has increased for the brave-hearted man who has filled with delight so many homes. He never knew what it was to have a father's guidance, for his mother was left a widow when she was but twenty-four and he only five years old. At the age of twenty-one he came into a fortune of five hundred a year. What wonder is it that this was quickly dissipated? He so ruled his life, however, 'that by his own exertions he was able to leave property to the value of seven hundred and fifty pounds a year.

The great sorrow of his life is indicated in the lines,

A fair young form was nestled near me, A clear, dear face looked fondly up,

And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me, There's no one now to share my cup ! But the stout-hearted man went bravely on, devoting all his care to the daughters whom he fondly loved. His firm Christian faith enabled him to do this. He prayed " that he might never write a word incon- sistent with the love of God or the love of.

man .... that he might always speak the- truth with his pen, and that he might never be actuated by a love of greed," " for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord " ; and he looked forward to death as a summons from, God for the purpose " of meeting the divine love and goodness."

As one reads his works with such thoughts as these they become doubly precious, and one feels assured that on Britain's roll of fame there is not a more stainless name than that of William Makepeace Thackeray.

JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS.

WYRE FOREST OLD SORB OR WHITTY PEAR TREE.

Berrow's Worcester Journal of Saturday,. 29 July, contains a very long account of a meeting of the Worcester Naturalists' Club at Wyre Forest on the preceding Tuesday, the occasion being the formal setting-up of an inscription on the site on which long stood the famous Old Sorb or Whitty Pear Tree.

Mr. F. R. Jeffery, in a paper tracing the- history of the Sorb Tree, said the history of the tree opens with a letter written to- the Philosophical Society in the year 1678 by one Edmund Pitts, then an Alderman of,, and who had been in 1656 Mayor of, tfie city of Worcester. The letter runs as follows :

" Last year I found a rarity growing wild in< a forest of this county of Worcester. It is- described by L'Obelius under the name of Sorbus Pyrijormus, as also by Mathiolus upon Dioscorides and by Bauhinus under the name- of Sorbus Procera, and they agree that in France,. Germany, and Italy they are commonly found,, but neither these or any of our own countrymen, as Gerard, Parkinson, Johnson, and How r nor those learned authors Merret or Bay, have taken notice of its being a native of England, nor have- any of our English writers so much as mentioned it, saving that Mr. Lyte in his translation of Dodonseus describes it under the name of the sorb-apple, but with no more of the place but that it groweth in Dutchland. It resembles the Ornus or Quicken Tree, only the Ornus bears the flowers and fruit at the end, this on the sides of the branch- Next the sun the fruit hath a dark red blush, and is about the bigness of a small Juneting Pear.. In September so rough as to be ready to strangle- one, but being then gathered and kept until October they eat as well as any medlar."

This Edmund Pitts was probably a physician or surgeon, and he is described by* the editor of the Philosophical Transac- tions as " a very knowing botanist." There is a monumental slab to his memory in St. Martin's Church, Worcester.