Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/207

 ii s. iv. SEPT. 9, i9ii.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

201

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 0, 1911.

CONTENTS.-No. 89.

NOTES: James Harrison, Painter and Architect, 201 F. J. Skill, an Unappreciated Artist, 203 Urban V.'s Family Name, 204 Elizabethan Plays in Manuscript B. L. Stevenson as a Scientific Observer British Museum : Earliest Guide" Beady-Money Mortiboy " Linlathen : its Position, 205 Coverham Horses Bail- way : Fire-damp : Early Mention Snakes drinking Milk Highgate Archway Oldest British Soldier Tailor and Poet Alderman Wooldridge, 206.

QUEBIES : Strawberry Hill : Description of the Villa ' "All my eye and Betty Martin" " Put that in your pipe and smoke it " Macaulay on the War of the Spanish Succession Bichard Cromwell : "When .Dick the fourth," 207 Mary Wollstonecraf t : Mrs. Brown Chaplains : their Status " The Boad to Jerusalem "Ancient Metal Box T. and P. Gaily, Printsellers, 208-Lunatics and Private Lunatic Asylums" Every Irishman has a potato in his head "Oliver Cromwell's Wife : Bourchier Family " Sevecher " Baker Family of Sissinghurst Authors Wanted -St. Esprit E. Lister: T. Lyster Thynnes of Longleat Jew and Jewson Surnames, 209 C. Elstob A. Eltharn G. England IliffG. Ireland Ivatt Gordon House, Scutari Moyle Book-plate Leman Street, 210.

REPLIES : Masonic Drinking- Mug : Toad Mugs, 210 French Coin : Bepublic and Empire, 211 Caracciolo Family Sir T. Middleton, 212 John Niandser Thir- teenth Bagstor Surname Swe-tapple Court, 213 Henry Watkins, M. P. Stockings Black and Coloured- Gyp's 'Petit Bob ' Drayson's 'Third Motion of the Earth,' 214-Cardinal Allen Grand Sharri Tephlia Moory-Ground " Make a long arm " Cowper on Lang- ford " Vive la Beige," 215 ' Ingoldsby ' Bebus Deeds and Abstracts of Title The Vicar of Waken* eld " Bed of roses" Overing Surname Club Etranger Barry O'Meara, 216 Washington Irving's 'Sketch- Book 'Sir John Arundel Bibles with Curious Beadings Grinling Gibbons Brisbane Family "Apssen counter" Lord Chief Justice and the Sheriff, 217 Beynolds's Pocket- Books " Wimple," 218.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' A Dictionary of Oriental Quota- tions ' Beviews and Magazines.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

JAMES HARRISON, PAINTER AND ARCHITECT.

ONE of our most beautiful, and, from an art-educational point of view, most useful, public collections, is that of the water- colour pictures in the National Gallery of British Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Among these is a picture which was acquired in 1876, under the " William Smith bequest." I have always been in- terested in river- and sea- scapes, and have given my attention to this one in particular, as, though it is charmingly painted, little Deemed to be known about it.

The picture is first entered in the Victoria and Albert catalogue of water-colours for 1878, where it is called " River with Vessels

(1829), by Thomas Harrison," birth and death being unknown. In the ] 884 edition it is attributed to, and entered as by, G. H. Harrison of the Old Water-Colour Society, who died 20 October, 1846.

The Thames barge with a cleckload of straw on the right at once proclaims it to be in English waters. Knowing the ports of the south and east coasts of England fairly well, I soon identified the picture as being a view on the Orwell ; and accordingly in the 1888 edition of the catalogue it is described thus : ' The River Orwell and the Bridge near Ipswich.' In the 1893 edition it is no longer under the name of G. H. H., but as follows: "Harrison (? Thomas, died 1829, aged 85)." The entry in the next andlast edition, 1908, shows that the catalogue has been compiled with much greater care. It reads : " Harrison (James), exhibited landscapes at the Royal Academy 1827-46." Then follows the description as above, and the size in inches, " 8 by 13|, signed and dated 1829."

Not being absolutely satisfied that the description I had suggested was accurate, I paid a visit last year to Harwich, and a sail up the Orwell at once satisfied nay doubt. But I took several pencil notes of the structure of the bridge, and on returning compared them with the picture, and estab- lished the identity entirely to my own satisfaction. I had often wished to go by land to the bridge, but, being a bad walker, was never able to do so. However, last year I was able to get there, as now a cor- poration tramway runs right up to the bridge, namely, Bourne Bridge, Wherstead. I found that the roof of the house represented behind the two-masted topsail schooner was the old "Ostrich Inn," one of great local celebrity. The sign is an ostrich with a horse- shoe in its mouth. This inn and the bridge are mentioned in ' Materials for the History of Wherstead,' by F. Barham Zincke, Chaplain to the Queen, 1893. When Zincke wrote he said the ostrich on the signboard had no horseshoe in its mouth, but it has one now, and over it the motto " prudens que patiens." ' At the Sign of the Ostrich,' by Charles James, 1895, is not the inn above- mentioned, but "the Ostrich at Colnbrook, some seventeen miles from London on the Great West road."

The Wherstead inn is well worth a visit, for it must be several hundred years old, and the disposition of the bar parlour and other rooms is still the same as it was originally. Needless to say, I took the hint comprised in the verse on an old inn I was