Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/481

 in. NOV., i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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WE must request correspondents desiring in formation on family matters of only private interes to affix their names and addresses "to their queries in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

TENNYSON'S ' DOHA.' On reading once again, after an interval of many years, Miss Mitford's delightful volume ' Our Village,' I have been struck by the extraordinary resemblance, both in plot and character, between her tale of ' Dora Creswell ' and Tennyson's well-known poem ' Dora." The incidents and characters (names alone ex- cept ed) are in fact identical, and I am curious to know whether others have observed this resemblance. It is, of course, just possible that Tennyson may have avowedly founded his poem upon Miss Mitford's tale.*

J. LUTTRELL PALMER.

60 King's Road, Bootle.

[The debt to Miss Mitford has been generally recognized. It is noted by Lord Tennyson (the main authority on the poet) in ' The Works of Tennyson Annotated,' Eversley Edition, ' Poems,' vol. i. pp. 391-2: "Partly suggested by Miss

itford s story, ' Dora Creswell,' which is cheerful in tone, whereas this is sad ; it is the same landscape one in sunshine, the other in shadow. Spedding used humorously to say that this was the poem which Wordsworth always intended to have written."

School editions also note the debt, e.g., Tenny- son's ' English Idylls, and other Poems,' ed. J. H. Fowler, 1909, and ' Tennyson : Poems published in 1842,' ed. A. M. D. Hughes, 1914. See the ' Handbook to Tennyson's Works,' by Morton Luce (1895), or ' Tennyson,' by Stopford Brooke (1898), for some criticisms of the poem.]

AVIGNON SOCIETY. In 1788 John Wright and William Bryan, two London working- men, dissatisfied with all forms of English religion, heard of the Avignon Society, walked across France, were hospitably entertained by the brethren at Avignon for seven months, and then sent home. Can any reader tell what this brotherhood was ? In Richard Brother's ' Revealed Know- ledge ' there is a " Peter Woulfe of the Avignon Society " mentioned ; and Sarah Flaxmer issued a tract (1795) warning her readers that the members of the Avignon Society were sent out by Satan.

G. R. BALLEINE.

St. James's Vicarage, Bermondsey.

EDWARD LAIT, WATER-COLOUR PAINTER. Can any of your readers give me informa- tion respecting an artist named Edward Lait, a painter of charming water-colour land- scapes, greatly resembling those of Birket

Foster ? He exhibited at the Suffolk Street Galleries in 1869, and unfortunately died very young, before his name became generally known.

I am the possessor of a drawing purporting to be by Edward Lait, but signed A. L. However, artists are frequently erratic in their methods of signature, and if any of your correspondents could give me informa- tion on this point and respecting his life and work, I should much appreciate it. X.

MARINE ARTISTS. I should be obliged by information as to the lives and work of any of the following artists, none of whom are mentioned in Bryan's ' Dictionary ' :

Vale, alluded to in Gent. Mag. for 1798, and by whom there was then a painting at Normanby Hall, Lincolnshire, of 'The Royal Catherine,' a seventeenth-century man-of-war.

John Carpenter, by whom there are four sepia drawings at South Kensington of South Coast scenes executed about 1827, but of whom no biography appears in the catalogue.

T. L. Hornbrook, who worked about 1834, and is described as " marine painter to the Duchess of Kent."

Edward Gwynn, who seems to have lived in Long Acre, and made drawings of eighteenth- century types of shipping about 1780. W. SENIOR.

Royal Societies Club, S.W.

ALESTON, MIDDLESEX : JOHN TOPPE = ANN CARDELL. Where is Aleston ? I have an impression that it was situated in close proximity to Barnet, where possibly the marriage of John Toppe and Ann Cardell took place.

The will of Thomas Cardell of Aleston, Middlesex, made in 1617, is rather lengthy. Testator desires to be buried in the parish church of St. Margaret, Westminster, and leaves a sum of money for the poor of that oarish. He mentions his nephew Daniel Bacheller, his servant and kinsman Edmund ! ardell, Clement Cotton (his wife's son), and- his friend Edmund Doubleday, to all of whom he leaves substantial legacies. He Bequeaths legacies to his daughter Grace joodman, widow ; his four children also >enefit. His daughter Ann Toppe, wife of John Toppe, likewise benefits. To the children of the Toppes substantial sums are bequeathed. His wife's name was Ellen Cardell.

Witnesses : Edward Doubleday, John Bacheller, Edmund Frankyn, Paule Smythe,