Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/27

 us. iv. JULY s, i9iL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1911.

CONTENTS.-No. 80.

NOTES : William Makepeace Thackeray, 21 The Military Canal at Sandgate, 23 Battle on the Wey, 24 -Disraeli and Bulwer ' Pilgrim's Progress,' Second Edition : Sup- pressed Passage Grimaldi as a Canary "Gothamites" =Londoners Eleemosynary Students and German Uni- rersities, 25 Spider Stories "But "=" Without" in the Bible "Ultonia" Astrology and 'The Encyclopaedia Britannica' "Pale Beer" "Gabetin" " The Rose of Normandy," Marylebone Gardens, 26.

QUERIES : Mitres at Coronations ' La Carmagnole' The Lotus and India Queen Elizabeth at Bishop's Stortford Diderot's ' Paradoxe sur le ComtSdien ' : Garrick, 27 " Agasonic " " Though Christ a thousand times be slain "Bishop Fletcher Robinson Arms and Motto Authors of Quotations Wanted" Here sleeps a Youth" 'St. Aubin; or, The Infidel,' 28 Limburger Cheese and Coffin 'Genealogical Collections John Rustat Heraldic Visitations " O for the life of a soldier ! " " Bursell," 29 ' Alpine Lyrics ' Cardinal Allen's Arms Apparition at Bovingdon, 30.

REPLIES : Capt. Cook Memorial The Cuckoo and its Call, 30 Cuckoo Rimes Thomson, Bonar & Co., 31 Sir John Arundel of Clerkenwell Burial Inscriptions, 32 Apparition at Pirton, Herts Macaulay's Ancestry 'Lizzie Lindsay,' 33 Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane- Novel with Three Titles Book Inscriptions Museums of London Antiquities " Taborer's Inn," 34" Haywra," Place-NameJohn Gallot Scots Music "The Gag," "Guillotine," and "Kangaroo," 35 Lamb's 'Rosamund Gray' Forbes of Skellater St. George and the Lamb, 36 'Waverley': "Clan of grey Fingon" Matthew Arnold on Hurry Raikes Centenary Figures rising from the Dead Shipdem Family Moor, More, and Moory- Ground, 37 Ralph Piggott, Catholic Judge Speaker Yelverton Rags left at Wells, 38.

NOTES ON BOOK: 'The Church Year and Kalendar' Reviews and Magazines.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, JULY 18TH, 1811-DECEMBEB 24TH, 1863.

ON the" eve of Christmas, 1863, while I was at work in my office, the whistle of the speaking tube sounded ; I went to it, and the words came : " Thackeray found dead in his bed this morning."

The suddenness of the event was so start- ling that it sent a thrill through the whole world of literature, and the grand old English festival opened with a note of sadness. Thackeray's last evening was spent just as he himself would have had it, had he known that in the night he would hear the call of the Master ; for he was making chil- dren happy with Christmas games in his house at Kensington. On the evening of the day on which he died he was expected to join a family party for the usual Christmas

tree at Mr. and Mrs. Benzon's. Lady Priestley in her * Story of a Lifetime ' writes :

" There was one guest missing ; his place at the table had been laid, it was now removed ; that guest was lying dead in the pretty red- brick house he had built for himself within a stone's throw of the festivities in which he was expected to take part, and the news that Thackeray was dead ' had only arrived an hour before."

A fortnight previously, as related by the Master of Charterhouse, the Rev. Gerald Davies, at the commemorative dinner in the old hall on Wednesday, the 28th of June, Thackeray had been present on Founder's day, and had spoken at the dinner. While the Master was speaking, the chapel bell tolled the Curfew, "as it had -tolled, but for one long interval, every night for 540 years." Mr. J. A. Foote, K.C., also related how he was present, then a boy of fourteen, and did not consider that the novelist had made a good speech, but was consoled in after years when he read in ' The Roundabout Papers ' Thackeray's own confession that " he could not make a good after-dinner speech, because he never could remember the excellent things he thought of in the cab."

Not only did Thackeray visit his old school within a fortnight of his death, but The Times in its notice on Christmas Day mentions his visit to his club two days previously, " radiant and buoyant with glee, full of plans and hopes " :

" On Monday last he was congratulating himself on having finished four numbers of a new novel ; he had the manuscript in his pocket, and with a boyish frankness -showed the last pages to a friend, asking him to read them and see what he could make of them. When he had completed four numbers more, he said, he would subject himself to the skill of a very clever surgeon and be no more an invalid."

The Times, referring to his early writings does

" not think, on the whole, as we look back, that if his fame at that time was unequal to his merits, the public were much to blame. The very high opinion which his friends entertained of him must have been due more to personal inter- course than to his published works. It was not until 1846 that Mr. Thackeray fairly showed to the world what was in him. Then began to be published in monthly numbers the story of picture was so true, the satire was so trenchant, the style was so finished. It is difficult to say which of these three works is the best, ' Vanity Fair,' ' Henry ^Esmond,' or ' The Newcomes.' Men of letters may give their preference to the second of these, which indeed is the most polished of all his works. But there is a vigour in the first-
 * Vanity Fair.' It took London by surprise. The