Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/425

 12 S. X. MAY 6, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 347 image will be that of a house bounding the eastern corner. 2. THE MITRE TAVERN. Mr. G. W. Bell (op. cit., p. 493), in con- cluding his account of the famous Mitre that stood on part of the site now covered by Messrs. Hoare's bank, observes : The survival to-day of another Mitre Tavern in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, has given rise to much confusion. It possesses a cast from Nolle- kens' bust of Johnson, to be seen in the upstairs coffee-room. The house has laid claim to be Johnson's Mitre, the scene of his suppers with Boswell, and of so many of his raciest sayings ; but for various reasons this claim must be rejected. Boswell's references are all to the Mitre in Fleet Street. Dr. Philip Norman kindly gave me the assistance of his extensive knowledge of old London taverns when I was looking into the matter, and his opinion is that a tavern, or coffee-house, in Mitre Court, probably took the name soon after the historic Fleet Street inn had closed its doors, in order to attract the custom. . . . Dr. Norman tells me that the earliest reference he knows is in the ' Epicure's Almanac ' (1815), wherein the writer speaks of the house as the Mitre and Chop-house. . . . The authentic Mitre Tavern, formerly No. 39, Fleet Street, closed its doors four years after Johnson's death, when Macklin, in 1788, re- opened it as the Poet's Gallery. I respectfully agree with Mr. Bell and Dr. Norman that the house in which John- son diverted himself and his friends was the more westerly one. It is clearly marked in Rocque's ' Survey ' of 1745 as located in a small court immediately opposite Hen and Chicken Court, which still survives. The celebrated Mitre never faced Fleet Street, but stood hid some considerable distance from the thoroughfare. But the following advertisement seems to show that the other, or more easterly, house standing in Mitre Court, immediately facing Fetter Lane, is an older house than has been supposed : Daily Courant, Feb. 6, 1703. At the Mitre Coffee-house in Mitre Court, near St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, will be sold by auction the goods of the late John Hill, sword-cutler, behind the Royal Exchange. . . . I admit this evidence is not conclusive, as the court in which " the authentic Mitre " stood branched at its lower end eastwards and emerged at the southern end of Mitre Court. In other words, there was an approach to " the authentic Mitre " from Mitre Court, an approach which, judging from Rocque's map, would be the convenient one for those residing in the Inner Temple. Nevertheless I am much inclined to think that the Mitre referred to in The Daily Courant of 1703 is a distinct entity from the use of the descriptive " coffee-house." Johnson's Mitre was in- variably called a " tavern " even so far back, as Mr. Bell shows, as 1639. J. PAUL DE CASTRO. AN IRISHMAN'S TOMB ON THE FRONTIER OF AFGHANISTAN. The following inscription comes, I think, from Kohat, far up on the Afghan frontier. There is a certain touch of undesigned humour in the epitaph, some- thing racy of the soil of Ould Ireland : Here rest the remains of Michael Healy, Apothecary in the Hon'ble Company's service, destroyed by the Afreedees 22nd March, 1850. Michael Healy was an Irishman, highly gifted with talents, energy and ambition. Foiled in his aim and weary of his struggle with the world, he ardently sought that repose which he has here found. This inscription I find among my old diaries, but forget how it came^to my hand. CHARLES SWYNNERTON. CHARLES PIGOTT, AUTHOR OF 'THE JOCKEY CLUB.' In the ' D.N.B.' there is only a very brief account of Charles Pigott, author of ' The Jockey Club,' a scurrilous publication but nevertheless a useful histori- cal document. He was descended from an old family, which for three generations pre- viously had been in possession of Chetwynd Park, Shropshire. His two elder brothers were the eccentric Robert Pigott (1736-1794), who sold the family estates and "was en- raptured by the French Revolution," and the Rev. William Pigott, rector of Chetwynd and afterwards of Edgmond, Shropshire, who was the father of the well-known authoress, Harriett Pigott, ob. April 8, 1846 or 1849 (Gentleman's Magazine, 1849, Pt. II., p. 100). On Aug. 4, 1775, Charles Pigott married Jenny, daughter of Jonothan Cope and half-sister of Sir Charles Cope, Bart., of Brewerne, Oxfordshire, " an arch and piquant coquette," but according to his niece, Harriett Pigott, in her ' Private Correspondence of a Woman of Fashion ' (1832), i. 56-60, the marriage was an un- happy one. The same authority states in her florid style that he was a careless husband. . . . She quitted the sunny side of rectitude for the thorny but now fre- quented path of error and she was wrecked ! . . . Her careless husband refused the redress of our Law Courts. . . . (' Private Correspondence,' i. 59-60). In ' The Minor Jockey Club ' (R. Farn- ham, 1794), p. 37, Charles Pigott is styled