Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/467

 12 s. X.MAY 2o, 1022,1 NOTES AND QUERIES. 381 LONDON. MAY 20. 1922. CONTENTS. No. 214. NOTES : Marat in England. 381 Peyto of Chesterton : Seventeenth-century Accounts, 384 The Battle of Tara, 385 Benson and Smith Families, 387 Hubert de Kie and Fnlbert of Dover Mad Plans that have been realized The Hackney Mermaid and the Old Freemasons, 388. QUERIES : Salad Pbillipps MSS. : Devaux Letters- Heraldic : Identification of Anns wanted, 389 Jeary Sir Samuel Mori and : Tablet at Hammersmith Allingham Family William Swan Burial of Lord Zouche. 1625 Bredon Hill Nineteenth - century Writers on Sport Austrian Hunting-hornWilliam Reader, 390 J. D. Herbert Rayment (Eng.) Capt. Jones's ' Adventures in Patagonia ' Temple Henry Croker William Cullen (Culling) Reversing the Union Jack Hudson Pedigree Nathaniel Fletcher Authors wanted. 391. REPLIES : John Frederick Smith, Novelist, 391 Need- ham's Point Cemetery, Barbados Capt. Stafford Bettes- worth Haines, 393 The Lytteltons and the Popish Plot- Composers of Hymn Tunes, 394 Stone Sign, Lower Thames Street English Army Slang Esquire and Essayist- Reformations of the Calendar, 395 Exhibitions of Automata in London Two Fleet Street Taverns Mothering Sunday, 396 The One-legged Lord Mayor Surnames as Christian Names -Rhymed History of England' The King, the Bishop, and the Shepherd,' 397 Cane-bottomed Chairs The Charing Cross Magazine Charles D. Gordon Loftus Barrel Organs in Churches " Tuileurs " : a French Masonic Term, 398 Martin " Tight," and Other Equine Terms, 399. NOTES ON BOOKS : ' A Guide to English Gothic Archi- tecture ' ' The Victorian Age ' ' Language : An Introduc- tion to the Study of Speech ' ' Readings in English Social History from Contemporary Literature.' Notices to Correspondents. Jgote*. MARAT IN ENGLAND. OVER a century ago, indeed so far back as the last few years of his own lifetime, there were intermittently afloat rumours associating the name of Jean Paul Marat with that of a certain Oxford criminal called Le Maitre. Gradually, however, and not perhaps sur- prisingly, these rumours, as well as the some- what obscure and complex incidents that gave them birth, began to fade in the glare of more lurid events, and it is only of recent years that the story of this identity has been revived and some slight, albeit not very enlightening, controversy evoked thereby. In the present paper it is proposed to adduce somematerial for the solution of this problem, drawn not so much from the public acts and utterances of Jean Paul as from the much less-known incidents of his private career, and to indicate the inferences that may safely be drawn therefrom. Let us recall the facts, so far as they can be said to be certainly known. Jean Paul Marat was born at Boudry, then in the Prussian principality, but now in the Swiss canton, of Neuchatel, on May 24, 1743. His father was a native of Cagliari, in Sardinia , where, it should be noted, the family name was spelt Mara, the final t having been added many years later by Jean Paul himself. In 1740 the elder Mara, having renounced Catholicism in favour of the Protestant religion, had migrated to Geneva, in which city, possibly for reasons connected with his conversion, he adopted the alias of Jean Mara (or Maxa) Bonfils, and it was under this pseudonym that, later in the same year, he married Louise Cabrol, a young French Protestant, whose people lived in Geneva and carried on the business of hairdressers. On March 10, 1741, the records show that the husband was formally admitted to the citizenship of Geneva. In 1742 they removed to Boudry, where apparently the alias of " Bonfils " was discarded, for the baptismal certificate of Jean Paul, dated June 8, 1743, describes him as the son of " Jean Mara." Although stated by several authorities to have been by profession a medical man, the elder Mara is described in his marriage con- tract merely as a "painter and designer," and while at Boudry he in fact obtained a situation in a business house in that capacity (Cabanes, * Marat Inconnu,' 2nd ed., p. 29 ; Bax, ' Life of Marat,' 1901, pp. 15-17). In 1754, however, he removed to the town of Neuchatel, where a notice is recorded that " the Sieur Jean Mara, native of Cagliari in Sardinia, proselyte, designer and master of the Italian and Spanish languages, having sought the right of domicile in this town, his request is adjourned for certificates of good conduct." Afterwards, on receipt of these, he was duly admitted as an inhabitant with full rights (Bax, p. 17). Finally, in 17 68 he returned to Geneva, where, it seems, he confined himself wholly to the calling of maitre de langues, for it is as such only that he is described in the register of his death in 1783. He left four sons, of whom Jean Paul was the eldest, and three daughters. The second son, Henri Mara, on completing his education, had obtained a post as tutor in a Russian college, where, curiously enough, he, too, assumed an alias, different, however, from the paternal one, viz., that of " M. de Boudry " (Cabanes, p. 34). Burdened thus with a wife and seven children, Mara pere appears always to have lived in straitened circumstances ; his estate realized but a few hundred florins, and on his death those