Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/589

 ii s. vi. DEC. 21, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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With King's knowledge this would have been rendered much easier.

King next offered to present the whole of his collections to the London Museum. They were declined at first, but afterwards a portion was accepted. This consisted of about one hundred of the framed " tin- selled portraits," a selection from which was exhibited at the opening, and forty enormous folio volumes of juvenile theatrical prints, chiefly comprising the halfpenny series.

One day in December, 1911. 1 happened to

?ay a visit to the London Museum, and as came out a van was at the door unloading. I immediately recognized King's gift, and said to the carman, " I see you have come from Mr. King's at Islington." He admitted he had, showing considerable surprise.

King did not avail himself of his " donor's ticket " for the opening, but he went afterwards, and expressed to me his disappointment at the place given to his portraits ; but still more at the way they were hung, " showing an utter want of knowledge of chronological and theatrical order and appropriateness," which might have been avoided if he had been consulted. He also complained that he had never once been allowed to see the Keeper. After having inspected the wonderful show at the London Museum. I can well understand the enormous pressure on Mr. Laking's time. It is difficult to imagine how he got the exhibits into such order as he has in the time, and in the very limited, and in many instances inadequate, space at his disposal.

Shortly before his death King privately printed at his own press a quarto pamphlet of eight pages, without title. It has his portrait as an old man, but a far better portrait, probably taken twenty years previously, is in The British Empire Journal for June, 1908. The matter of his pamphlet is apparently taken from some newspaper account of his gift to the London Museum. He prints the letter, dated 4th Jan., 1912, accepting it.

Jonathan King was a devout man through life. When he began business he deter- mined never to open his shop on Sundays. He was told he would soon be ruined, and, indeed, the loss must have been great, when it is considered that in those times in his neighbourhood Sunday was the busiest day of the week. He was also a staunch tee- totaller. - but nullified this in my idea by being an immoderate smoker of cigars. He never took holidays ; the sole exception was one at the seaside, when he got so inexpres- sibly bored that he returned after a few days.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and hand- some : an indefatigable worker, making up his mind instantly. If he had started in life as a soldier, he had the qualities in him. to have become a general.

RALPH THOMAS.

FEMINISM^ IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

RECENT expressions of opinion, not alto- gether subdued in their tenor, find anticipa- tion in the following quotations from two seventeenth-century writers whose singular,, almost contemporaneous, concurrence of view seems not to have been perceived by literary historians or critics. It would be interesting to discover other declarations of uncom- promising feminism dating from about the same time.

The first is to be found in the character- istically acrid pamphlet or essay by Quevedo, entitled 'La Fortuna con seso y la hora de todos,' published in 1650 at Zaragoza, five years after the death of its author. M. E. Merimee, in his excellent monograph on. Quevedo (1886), mentions the dedication of the work as bearing the date 1636, and points out the close intellectual and moral connexion of this composition with the often- translated ' Suefios,' or ' Visions. The passage in question runs as follows r

" One of these women, the richness of whose beauty was but increased through the convulsion, of her anger .... exclaimed : ' Tyrants, on what ground, seeing that women constitute one naif of the human race, have you by yourselves framed laws against them, without their consent and out of your own arbitrary will? }ou d us the privilege of studies, lest we should outstrip you in them. . .you have estab hshed yur^lves as arbiters of peace and war, whilst we have t suffer for your madness ; unfaithfulness is in oui case a mortal crime, with you an amusement m life ; you wish us to be good, m order that voxt may be wicked ; pure, in order that you may b dissolute ; not a single feeling on our part but

vou chain it up, &c Now is the day

reform, either by giving us our share m learn and government, or by hearing us and I'^temng the burden of laws which press on us, through the passing of some in our favour as well as t repeal of others which are injurious tc us.

My other authority is Fransoh du Soucy r Seigneur de Gerzan, in ' Le Tnomphe d<* Dames,' of which the first edition is dated 1646. The work was well known in its day, and was ushered into publicity by eighteen laudatory* introductions (largely sonnets) written by such literary men of that time as La Chapelle, Colletet, Furetiere, &c. It is in reality of the nature of a tau* or encmnium, in rebuttal of the traditional