Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/238

 232

NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. iv. SEPT. 16, 1911.

1904, will be found a view of the James Street Court, from a photograph taken e curis Mr. Alfred Marks, together with a plan of the neighbourhood as in 1799. The Builder of 2 July, 1904, describes and illus- trates with plans the manifold changes made in St. Martin's parish in 1801-1900 ; two of the plans, showing St. Martin's Street with its courts, the Upper Mews, and around, are reproduced from E. Waters' s Survey, 1799, of the parish, and that Survey as corrected to 1840 by James Wyld.

W. E. D. MILLIKEN.

The Fives Court in St. Martin's Lane, the Tennis Courts in Windmill Street, and the Tennis Court in James Street, Hay- market, were three distinct places. Hazlitt describes Cavanagh as playing fives in the Fives Court, but I cannot ascertain the date : Cavanagh was dead in 1819, and did not play for the last two or three years of his life.

The second volume of ' Boxiana ' speaks of the Fives Court in St. Martin's Street, Leicester Fields, as being in high repute for sparring exhibitions in 1818. At the end of the same volume are accounts of exhibi- tions there from 1816 to 1818; but these could not have included the earliest, for the sparring then took place on a stage, whereas "originally" the combatants stood on the floor. In vol. i. of ' Boxiana ' is a picture, drawn and etched by George Cruikshank, of a sparring match at the Fives Court, and this is evidently the same court as the one depicted in the engraving of 1821, where Randall and Turner (not Martin) are sparring. I see no great resemblance to a fives court or a tennis court. There are about 100 people in the engraving of 1821, of whom nearly 40 are identified in the key plan ; and it is more than once stated that the court would hold 1,000 people. Obviously the building must have been altered since it was used as a fives court.

The late Mr. Julian Marshall in his ' Annals of Tennis' gives a detailed account of the Tennis Courts in Windmill Street and in James Street, and, if the Fives Court had ever been a tennis court, it would not have escaped his notice. The Tennis Court in Windmill Street was repaired and opened for a display of the art of self-defence in 1820. It was used for roller skating in 1823, and afterwards for billiards, as a workshop for lamps, for a waxworks exhi- bition, and finally for the site of the Argyll Rooms.

Tennis was played in the court in James Street until 1866. I have before me a letter from Thomas Stone, the head professional at the Royal Tennis Court in Melbourne, and he mentions that in 1859 he went to the Haymarket court as a professional.

J. J. FREEMAN.

MAID A : JAMES GRANT (11 S. iv. 110, 171). I am greatly obliged for the exhaustive replies to my query, as also to MAJOB WILLCOCK for a private communication.

I have read several good accounts of the battle, in one of which, however, the writer makes it appear that the flank companies, which .formed the provisional grenadier and light battalions respectively, were those detached from the regiments engaged, viz., 20th, 27th, 35th, 58th, 78th, and 81st, whereas it is evident that the 61st was repre- sented in them.

A good description of the battle is given by James Grant in his ' Adventures of an Aide-de-Camp,' allowance being made for the fiction with which it is entwined ; but he surely exceeds the licence granted to authors of that class in substituting, at the evacua- tion of the fortress of Scylla some eighteen months later, the name of his hero for that of Lieut. -Col. Robertson, the real commandant. I am aware that in his ' British Battles by Land and Sea ' he gives the right name, but that does not excuse what would seem to be an unwarrantable liberty. It is one thing to place an imaginary officer in the ranks of a regiment, as many writers of fiction have done e.g., in the Light Cavalry charge at Balaclava ; but it would be quite another to put some fictitious leader in the place of Lord Cardigan.

I have just seen in ' An Introductory History of England,' by C. R. L. Fletcher, the following :

" It was on that occasion that, an alarm being suddenly given, the Grenadiers and the Innis- killings, who were bathing from the beach, rushed from the water, seized their muskets, and fell in stark naked."

What is the authority for this statement ? I have not met with it in any of the accounts that have previously come in my way.

E. L. H. TEW. Upham Rectory.

KING GEORGE V.'s ANCESTORS (11 S. iv 87, 134, 173). Some literary associations may help to impart individuality to what might otherwise seem rather shadowy per- sonages. Frederick V. of Denmark was the