Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/309

 ii s. ix. APRIL is, 19R] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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be safe any where till thes p'sons are destroyd which I hope his Ma tie will see done. I have nothing more but that I shall ever be your devoted servant HUMP: TUCK.

Desolation, Sept. 6, 66.

" Mr. Houghton presents his respects to you, and is a sad man for ye Citty besides his own

WlLMOT CORFIELD.

"PLOWDEN." In a review of Col. Chiche- ley Plowden's recently published records of his family there occurs the following sen- tence, which may not be seen by all readers of N. & Q.,' but which would certainly interest that large number of them who study the meaning of place-names (The Athenceum, 7 March, p. 359) :

" the proposed derivation of Plowden from

plio (Cymric = clearing) and den (Saxon = wooded valley) a hybrid apparently carefully compounded to express the not verv obvious idea of a densely wooded clearing ! "

ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

' N. & Q.' IN FICTION. Many of your contributors must have noted with interest the considerable 'part played by a copy of 'N. & Q. : in Mr. A. E. W. Mason's latest novel, ' The Witness for the Defence.' I do not remember any other instances of its appearance in fiction, but if such exist they might well be put upon record for the sake of the annals of ' N. & Q.'

MARGARET LAVINGTON.

[Several instances are recorded in the contribu- tions at 9 S. vii. 85, 155 ; xi. 265 ; xii. 151, 276, 454.]

PHIL MAY AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. Sir Henry Lucy in ' Sixty Years in the Wilder- ness ' (Cornhill Magazine, March issue) con- tributes some interesting reminiscences of Phil May, and states :

" Generous to a fault, he was the daily prey of a large class of hanger-on at Fleet Street bars and late-night clubs. Anybody could get any- thing out of him by asking, and there were many who were not restrained by conscience in the matter.

The true history of Phil May's struggling days has yet to be written. Not a few of those " who were not restrained by con- science " really helped him previously, when he was on the verge of starvation. Most of the published reminiscences of Phil May the biography of 'D.N.B.' included, have been written by men who knew him only during his Punch days, and have little or no know- ledge of the St. Stephen's Review period and the more shady days.

It is not generally known that Phil May during more than two years of his life filled up a portion of his time with what is sometimes called " penny-a-lining." This

included reports of inquests, accidents, fires, and labour strikes at the Docks and in the East End of London. He rarely used his own name on the " copy," but generally that of the better-known " liner," the late Mr. Walter Duncan. Phil received two- thirds of the money for the " copy " used by the London newspapers, and Duncan the remainder for the use of his name. The accounts were always collected at the news- paper offices by Walter Duncan.

ANDREW DE TERNANT. 36, Somerleyton Road, Brixton, S.W.

ALLSOP PLACE. In the discussion on the demolition of Mrs. Siddons's house in Upper Baker Street, reference was made in ' N. & Q.* (see 9 S. ix. 224, 355) to this short turning off the Marylebone Road. From an interest- ing article in The Pall Mall Gazette of 12 March, 'The Development of Baker Street/ one is now able to identify the name as associated with Allsop Farm, " along the boundary of which " ran Upper Baker Street. We are further told that in 1820 the " Cow Yard of Allsop's Farm lay at the back of " the offices of Messrs. George Head & Co., auctioneers and surveyors, in that street. This firm has now secured other premises in the immediate neighbourhood after nearly a century's continuous occupation.

CECIL CLARKE.

Junior Athenaeum Club.

SAMUEL ANNESLEY. The Guardian of 20 March contains an article headed ' New Light on the Wesleys,' in which the relations, between Samuel Wesley, father of John, and his brother-in-law are described in the light shed on them by discoveries of docu- ments in the India Office. The wills both of Samuel Annesley and his wife are quoted, and it would appear that he probably died about the year 1732. Tyerman's ' Life of Samuel Wesley ' gives no hint of Annesley's being a married man, and says that " all at once he suddenly disappeared, and no account was ever received, either of his person or his property. The probability is that he was robbed and murdered."

His willis dated 1729, and that of his wife, 1732/3, and in both the expectations 'of the Wesley family of legacies are utterly dis- appointed.

Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch, in his novel ' Hetty Wesley,' speaks of Annesley's em- barkation for England and sudden disappear- ance from his cabin, and of his being found afterwards as a begging hermit among the Indian hills. Is not this'worthy of mention in ' N. & Q.' ? " E. L. H. TEW.