Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/69

 ii s. iv. JULY 22, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

William Carmichael Smyth, 9th September, 1861, aged 81 years.

, ' Adsum.'

" ' And lo, he whose heart Was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master.' ' Newcomes,' vol. iii. chap. 26. On the rebuilding of the church his grave was brought within the walls. He was laid to rest immediately beneath this place by his, stepson, William Makepeace Thack- eray."

Mrs. Ritchie in a letter to the Rev. J. M. Lester, Incumbent of the church, stated :

" The ' Adsum,' and the rest of the quotation from ' The Newcomes,' was put upon the brass because I knew that Major Carmichael Smyth had suggested the character of Col. Newcome to nay father, and so it seemed appropriate and natural."

There has been so much said as to Thack- eray's broken nose that a communication made by OCTOGENARIAN [Mr. Ralph N. James] on April 5th, 1890, is of interest :

' ; I have a distinct recollection of Thackeray's face in 1832, when he was living in the Temple, and can assure MR. HAMILTON [who had a note on the subject on the 15th of March] that his nose was as straight as most noses are before 1835, when he met with the accident at Montmorency. .... I have a portrait in oils which is very like what Thackeray was in 1832, and the nose is straight. Moreover, he did not then wear spectacles."

On the 31st of May MB. HENRY GERALD HOPE refers to portraits where the nose is not out of joint. SIR WILLIAM FRASER says on the same date that he always believed that Thackeray's nose was broken in a fight at Charterhouse by Venables, Q.C., lately deceased. "Mr. Venables," adds SIR WILLIAM, " was a member of the Society of Dilettanti, and I often sat next to him. On at least one occasion I alluded to the fact, and he certainly did not deny it." F. J. P., writing from Boston, U.S.A., states in the same number that when Thackeray was in America (he sailed on the 30th of October, 1852, with Clough and Lowell as his fellow -passengers)

" he dined one day with Mr. X., a distinguished literary man of this city, whose nose made a good second to Thackeray's. The ladies had left the room, and the two gentlemen Were sitting over their wine, when X. proposed that they should join the ladies ; upon which Thackeray asked, ' What do the ladies care for two broken- nosed old fellows like us ? ' It is said that X. had no regard for Thackeray thereafter."

Some of the legends connected with the injury to Thackeray's nose have also been discussed in ' N. & Q.' in the present year (see 11 S. iii. 162, 251).

JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS

(To be continued.)

YEWS IN CHURCHYARDS.

SOME general observations as to the origin,' of the association of the common yew,, Taxus baccata, with churchyards (10 S. iii. 166, 291, 337) may be of interest.

Yews were planted in barrows expressly to denote their purpose. There is little or- no doubt that they existed in places of Druidical worship previous to the erection of Christian churches upon the same sites. In Wales great value used to be set upon the yew tree, which is proved by the ancient Welsh laws, the consecrated yew of the priests having supplanted in value the sacred mistletoe of the Druids. By a statute of Edward I., trees were required to be placed' in churchyards to defend the church fronv high winds, the clergy being allowed to- cut them down for repairing the chancel' when necessary. So, partly for this reason, it is conjectured that the yew was commonly planted by the side of a newly built church ; and also partly for another reason that as the tough nature of the wood of the- branches resists the severest storms, they are subject to few accidents from the elements.

The Rev. W. T. Bree in The Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi., suggests that " churches were more frequently built in yew groves or near old yew trees, than that yew trees were planted in churchyards- after the churches were built."

Mr. Bowman, ibid., vol. i., New Series, says :

" It seems most natural and simple to believe- that, being indisputably indigenous, and being, from its perennial verdure, its longevity, and the durability of its wood, at once an emblem and a specimen of immortality, its branches would be employed by our pagan ancestors, on their first arrival here, as the best substitute for the cypress,, to deck the graves of the dead and for other sacred' purposes. As it is the policy of innovators in religion to avoid unnecessary interference with matters not essential, these, with many other customs of heathen origin, would be retained and' engrafted on Christianity on its first introduction." Briefly, then, it may be said that the yew in primitive times, being common and a suitable evergreen, was selected to mark the site of graves ; thus associated with the dead, the place would be used for offerings and for worship, and later a temple or a church would be erected for such observance. Christians planted yews in churchyards on account of its recognized association with graves. The ghastly superstition attached' to the yew when growing in a churchyard, that it would prey upon the dead bodies