Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/556

 458 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. x. 1022. in that city anyway. " Queen of the Plaza " no more means prostitute than " Queen of the Platform " or " Queen of the Park Concerts " would. The contradiction of her marriages staggers me, and I do not grasp its extent. " Heenan, Barclay and other men " : does he mean to say she did not marry Newell, who was blighted by it ? or did not travel as Mrs. Heenan ? or that the divorce records are fictions ? I have spoken no evil of her the reverse ; and am more than ready to believe any good or discount any scandal. I shall be deeply interested in MB. MOOBE'S biography, and have so written him per- sonally. " FOBBEST MOBGAN. Hartford, Conn. D'ANVEBS ABMS INN : PINDAB'S BAGNIO (12 S. x. 409). I regret I am unable to assist MB. -FooBD, neither establishment being known to me. It is unlikely Pindar's Bagnio offered the accommodation of an inn : Smithfield and Aldersgate-street teemed with inns and a bagnio-keeper situated mid- way could scarcely have competed with them. Bagnios were sometimes also coffee houses : Daily Courant, Jan, 10, 1709. Coffee at this time being very scarce in Town, and I having more by me then [sic] I can use in a reasonable time, am willing to sell some at moderate price at the Bagnio Coffee-house in Newgate-street. About the same date there was a Duke's Bagnio coffee-house on the south side of Long Acre, which took its name, however, from the Duke's Bagnio or Sweating-house, next to which it stood. Occasionally bagnios were also taverns. In 1741 Mrs. Ebeall an- nounced herself in The Daily Advertiser of Nov. 7 as keeping the Bell Tavern or New Crown Bagnio in St. Martin' s-lane, near the church ; and in 1785 the Globe Tavern in Craven Street re-opened as the Globe Ta ern, Coffee-house and Royal Hummums. J. PAUL DE CASTBO. " MONKEY TBICK " (12 S. x. 408). There occurs another instance of the use of this expression in the eighteenth century in the ' Memoirs of William Hickey ' (1914, i. 27) : My father's next door neighbour at Twicken- ham was Mr. Hudson, the portrait painter, to whom Sir Joshua Reynolds had been a pupil. His figure was rather grotesque, he being uncom- monly low in stature, with a prodigious belly, and constantly wearing a large white bushy perriwig. He was remarkably good tempered, and one of my first-rate favorites, notwithstanding he often told me that I should certainly come to be hanged. I was always playing my monkey tricks with him, and thereby getting into disgrace. J. PAUL DE CASTBO. RHYMED HISTOBY OF ENGLAND (12 S. x. 249, 297, 352, 376, 397, 414). As we have had so much on this subject, I may mention that from a set of verses on the successive reigns I derived my first ideas of history, as also those of reading and spelling, from a " spelling book " entitled ' Infantine Knowledge,' (4th ed., London, John Harris, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1835), in which those verses are contained, pp. 177-195. The first begins : William the First, as the Conqueror known, By the Battle of Hastings ascended the throne. Eight lines. The Curfew and the Tower of London are referred to. Of his successor we learned that he was " styled Rufus, from having red hair," and about his being accidentally shot to the heart, "and the body was carried away in a cart." Of Henry I., that " Beauclerc, or Fine Scholar," he was " justly surnamed," but that "at last, by a surfeit of lampreys, he died.'* All the verses contained similar matters of interest. The last sovereign referred to was William IV. I being then about five years old, and being well acquainted with the other verses, remarked to my father that we ought now to have a verse for Queen Victoria, for I had been impressed, as I still remember, by the church bells ringing for the Coronation, by some dainty called " Coronation cake," and by the novelty of having a queen instead of a king. So my father wrote, in characters that I could read, on an inserted slip : Since this book was printed, King William has gone, Without leaving a son to be placed on his throne ; So Victoria, his niece, is our Lady and Queen, Our Sovereign belov'd, and the best we have seen ; And long may she govern, enjoying her right In one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight. J. T. F. Winterton, Lines. EABLY VICTOBIAN LITEBATUBE : (12 S. x. 210, 273, 332, 372, 417). The following additional particulars concerning Thomas Peskett Prest may be of interest to readers of 'N. & Q.' Prest was a relative of the Right Rev. Edward Prest, who was Arch- deacon of Durham during the sixties, and Mr. Church said he prepared for the printers some of his relative's theological publications. Prest made some attempts as a dramatist, but most of his plays (mainly adaptations from the French) were produced at the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton, under the name of the manager-proprietor, Mr. Lane.