Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/373

 12 8. II. Nov. 4, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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-good character this country bears, for Pleasure and Plenty ; and intend with your Leave to publish a Weekly Newspaper under the title of 'The Beading Mercury or Weekly Entertainer : containing Historical and Political Observation on "the most remarkable Transactions in Europe ; Collected from the best and most authentick Accounts written and printed ; with the Imports

and Exports of Merchandizes, to assn' from London and other remarks on Trade ; also the beat Account of the Price of Corn in the most-noted

3Iarket-Towns 20 or 30 mile circular. And when a scarcity of News happens we shall divert you with something merry. In a few words, we shall spare no Charge or Pain to make the Paper

generally useful and Entertaining, since we find

ourselves settled in a Place which gives all the Encouraging Prospect of success : a Description of which we think ourselves oblig'd to give, in Justice and Respect to the Country, and for the better

^information of Persons who live remote from

honve ....

The Reading Mercury is the same size as, and agrees in nearly all particulars with,

'the papers mentioned above. The three

-asterisks mark where there are woodcuts. I have before alluded to the fact that certain

-woodcuts are used more than once. 'The Post-Boy ' is one of these. The Flying-Post : or Post Master, July 2 to July 4, 1723, and The Post-Boy, July 4, 1723, of London, both

use it, and their woodcuts are signed " F. Hoffman, fecit." It occurs to me that

possibly Hoffman engraved some of the woodcuts for The Reading Mercury, as

-perhaps also for The St. Ives Post, as they are of similar design or may be copies. It would be rather interesting to know these

early engravers of newspaper woodblocks, and

at is likely that others besides the London


 * Post-Boy 'are signed.

My little group of papers all appeared within about seven years of each other, 1716-23. It is personally interesting to me to find that The Reading Mercury referred to St. Ives, my native town, and to Cirencester, the town of my adoption. I might thus ^almost include the Cirencester one in my -circle, and it is of the same period. The 'Cirencester Post, or Gloucestershire Mercury. the first Gloucestershire newspaper, appeared, say, Nov. 17, 1718, to 1724. The Gosport paper I do not know. I have only mentioned those I have seen or possess. If I included The Exeter Post-Boy of 1707, and others I know something about, but have not per- sonally examined, the circle of early pro- vincial newspapers would be nearly complete.

In conclusion I may suitably give a -quotation from a cutting, July 10, 1906, before me :

" NEWSPAPER'S 183RD BIRTHDAY. The staff of The Reading Mercury and Berks County .Paper, have just celebrated the 183rd birthday of

that journal at Kingston Lisle. In the course of his speech at the dinner at the Bed Lion, Lam- bourn, Mr. Alfred Smee, who has served the paper for fifty years, mentioned the interesting fact that eleven members of the staff had worked at the Mercury for an aggregate of 400 years. The paper has been in the present proprietor's family for upwards of 100 years. The only copy of the original number is to be seen at the Bodleian Library, Oxford."

HERBERT E. NORRIS.

Cirencester.

POE, MARGARET GORDON, " BETSY " BONAPARTE, AND " OLD MORTALITY." It is well known that Edgar Allan Poe as a two-year-old child was adopted in 1811 by John Allan, a native of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, who had settled in Richmond, Virginia. In 1830 estrangement was estab- lished between them. This seems to have been partially due to Mr. Allan's second marriage to Miss Louisa Gabriella Patterson, whose father (according to Harrison's bio- graphy of Poe) was John William Patterson, a lawyer of New York and a son of Capt. John Patterson of the English army.

Perhaps the following facts are worth assembling. An elder brother, Walter, of Capt. John Patterson was the first Governor (1770-86) of Prince Edward Island (as it is now called), Canada. Governor Patterson had a granddaughter Margaret Gordon, who was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and has been called " Carlyle's First Love." This is the Margaret Gordon familiar to readers of Carlyle's ' Reminiscences ' she who, according to Froude, was the original, so far as there was an original, of Blumine in ' Sartor Resartus,' and who returned to the island of her birth as wife of the Lieu- tenant Governor, Sir Alexander Bannerman.

Governor Patterson was a second cousin of William Patterson, whose brilliant daughter " Betsy " married Jerome, Napoleon Bona- parte's brother, who became King of Westphalia.

Furthermore, I am persuaded by various evidence that the forbears of this Patterson family and that of Robert Paterson, who has been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott as " Old Mortality," were the same. My proofs of the connexion are, however, not yet complete. The difference in the spelling of the names has no significance.

R. C. ARCHIBALD. Brown University, Providence, R.I., U.S.A.

HENRY FAUNTLEROY, FORGER. (See 1 S. viii. 270 ; ix. 445 ; x. 114, 233 ; 2 S. iv. 227 ; 8 S. x. 173, 246; xi. 231.) I possess a catalogue of the library of Henry Fauntleroy, the banker of Berners Street, who was