Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/173

 12 8. HI. MARCH 3, 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

167

FRANCES, VISCOUNTESS VANE. The ad- -ventures of this lady, wife of William, second and last Viscount Vane in the peerage of Ireland, afforded considerable material for gossip in the middle of the eighteenth century, Horace Walpole making divers uncomplimentary references to her in his letters, and it being stated that she fur- rushed her own biography to Smollett, as the " Ladv of Quality " in ' Peregrine Pickle.'

A slim volume, entitled ' The History of a Woman of Quality ; or, the Adventures of Lady Frail, by an Impartial Hand,' was published in London, 1751, 8vo ; and my copy has a MS. note to the effect that it was writt en by Lionel Vane. This book professes to give an unvarnished description of the lady's remarkable career from the year " one thousand seven hundred and, but good nature commands us to forbear the rest " (my MS. supplies the blank by the date " 1728"), when "the Bloom of what has now long been the celebrated Lady Frail appeared in the midst of a crowded Season at Bath ; Her Age barely seventeen."

If this statement be correct, she must have been born about the year 1711 ; her father's name was Francis Hawes of Purley I think a director of the South Sea Company ; and her first husband Lord William Hamilton, brother of the Duke, to whom she was married in May, 1733. Lord William dying not long afterwards, she remarried to Lord Vane in 1735. The next fifteen years were those in which the Viscountess became, in Walpole's words, " a living academy of love lore," and were largely passed on the Continent ; but in 1750 she was again living under her husband's roof, and the appearance so soon afterwards of the ' History of Lady Frail,' together with another publication, called ' A Letter to the Right Hon ble Lady

V ss V ,' London, 1751, is perhaps

attributable to the indignation of Lord Vane's family at their reconciliation, with the prospect of his large fortune eventually passing to her, instead of to his own kin.

Is anything known of the subsequent history of this ill-assorted couple ? Lady Vane lived on till 1 788, when, if Lionel Vane be accurate, she had reached her 77th year, her ill-treated husband dj^ing the following year at his town house in Downing Street, "whilst a reference in The Gentleman's Maga- zine for May, 1789, is said to have been Tvritten by some one well acquainted with Lord and Lady Vane.

The bulk of Lord Vane's fortune, greatly impaired by her ladyship's extravagances,

passed by his will to his cousin, Mr. Papillon of Acrise, in Kent, in which county the Vane seat of Fairlawn was also situate ; and his descendant, Mr. Papillon, now has a collec- tion of portraits of this branch of the Vanes at Crowhurst Park, near Hastings, and may own other relics of the fair and frail Frances. The Viscount had sold in his lifetime Caverswall Castle and other estates in Staffordshire, which he had inherited from his mother Lucy, daughter and coheir of William .Jolliffe ; and the sum of 60,00(tf., which Walpole says he received from the Duke of Newcastle for breaking the entail of the Holies property (to which he had become heir in right of his grandmother Grace Holies, Lady Barnard), had been squandered on such articles as a " chariot with the fittings of solid silver." I may remark that Lady Vane had no children by either of her marriages. H.

" RUNT." ' The Oxford Dictionary ' quotes no instance of " runt," in the sense of " a small pig," earlier than the year 1841. On p. 108 of " Letters from Simpkin the Second to his dear brother in Wales ; (By Ralph Broome) the second edition. London : 1792," we read :

'twas the custom to keep, So our father commanded, the Runts and our

Sheep ;

The first edition of this book appeared in 1789. EDWABD S. DODGSON.

The Union Society, Oxford.

THE INTRODUCTION or TURKEY-RED DYE- ING INTO ENGLAND : THE MARQUIS DE LAUNAY. (See 7 S. viii. 485 ; ix. 37 ; x. 178). The following announcement of death from The Manchester Guardian of Jan. 8, 1917, and two following days, seems worth re- producing :

" De Launay. On the 24th ult., at Chorlton- on-Medlock, Margery Genevieve de Launay, youngest child of the late Louis Barthelemy de Launay and granddaughter of Angel Raphael Louis de Launay (late of Blackley, Manchester)."

I send the subjoined paragraph from The Manchester Weekly Times of Oct. 5, 1889, which reads thus :

" The late Mr. C. L. Delaunay. We regret to record the death of Mr. Charles Louis Delaunay, a member of an historical family. Mr. Delaunay, who had resided in Salford for many years, was the son of the late Mr. L. B. Delaunay, of Blackley, and had reached his sixty-third year. He was the grandson of the Marquis de Launay, who about a century ago was Governor of the Bastille hi Paris. The family of the unfortunate Marquis came over to England, and started the first turkey-red dyeing establishment formed in England, at Blackley."