Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/83

 12 S. V. MARCH, 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

77

states that the priory was founded on the site afterwards occupied by the parsonage house.

"Among the Burrell MRS.," says Medland,"is an extract of a letter of Mr. Hoper, the vicar, to Mr. Burrell, dated April 19, 1777, in which he says : of six Carthiisian monks, subject to a superior religious house at Caen in Normandy.' There are here two mistakes but Mr. Upper gives doubt- less the current tradition concerning the site of the priory ; and the tradition was confirmed, A.D. 1848, by the discovery of the fishponds belonging to the establishment, when the foundations were dug out for the wall of the vicarage garden."
 * The parsonage house was formerly the residence

Steyning was evidently a place of con- siderable importance in Saxon times, for it had a royal mint. Specimens of coins minted there have been found at Chancton in the neighbourhood. O. KING SMITH.

For a life of this saint see the Bollandist Fathers' ' Acta Sanctorum ' under the date given (Feb. 8). The title is : ' De S. Cuth- mano Confess ore Stenningse in Normannia ' (about 2| pp.). L. L. K.

'THE NEWCOMES ' (12 S. v. 14). It is not very probable that a " key " to chap. viii. exists ; and, if it did, it would perhaps be like many similar "keys" bright and ingenious, but unlocking nothing. Thackeray is as difficult in such matters as Dickens is easy. We have his own statement that Col. Newcome himself was in life no one in particular, and little more can be said. Lady Ritchie writes all that is necessary (Introduction to 'The Newcomes ') : " We called her Aunt Becher, but her other name I do believe was Miss Martha Honeyman." "Pidge of Brazenose " is hinted at; and, most curiously, Thackeray himself as " J. J.," in almost his own words of that artist (drawing " not so much the things he saw, as the things he thought about," at a very juvenile age) : as distinguished from Clive, who did the other thing. Mrs. Hobson is, of course, a supreme creation of her genre. There is nothing quite like her in our litera- ture, though plenty in her very image in our lives. She is rife at present. " Social conditions " is her shibboleth, and her own social condition her end ehe wishes to become Lady Ann Newcome still. It should be remembered that Mrs. Hobson's guests were notorieties rather than notabilities.

The powerful chapter in ' Pendennis ' describing the literary dinner at the incep- tion of The Pall Mall Gazette has been fitted with a " key." But very little is revealed, and it may be doubted if Shandon was wholly

Maginn; Wenham and Wagg, Croker and : Hook ; Warrington, Venables, &c. If the sensible, lovable Foker was really the cad Archdeckne, Thackeray is to be thanked for a noble action. Bulwer was the head and front of his early offending in this matter, and he made full amends. Things like Mrs. Nickleby and Micawber (Dickens's mother and father), Harold Skimpole, &c. r were not at all to Thackeray's taste.

But if any "key" existed to 'The Newcomes ' chapter, it would surely not reveal Charlotte Bronte in " Mies Pinnifer." Thackeray's opinions on ' Jane Eyre ' and its author are given somewhat over-fully in his introductory note to ' Emma,' a fragment by Charlotte Bronte (Cornhill Magazine, 1860). They could have led to no such caricature. It is strange how his ideas on ' Jane Eyre ' developed. Writing to Brookfield in October, 1848, he professes almost to believe, on the authority of "old Dilke of The Athenceum," that " Procter and his wife " wrote the book. Later he owns, more seriously, that he left his own urgent work undone that he might finish the volumes. Probably he tasted the flattery of some of the imitation the theatricals, for instance, natural enough in ' Vanity Fair,' but fairly dragged into ' Jane Eyre.'

Thackeray, who wished no ' Life ' to be written of him, carried the keys of his characters (if there were such) with him. His only real biographers Lady Ritchie and Leslie Stephen tell uts little or nothing. It is very well so. There was no tale to- tell. GEORGE MARSHALL.

21 Parkfield Road, Liverpool.

RICHARD I. IN CAPTIVITY (12 S. iv. 303 ; v< 21). In the 1876 edition of 'Flaherty' (edited by the late Prof. Stubbs) the last entry under 1192 reads, not "in a castle in the Tyrol," but (p. 132) " at Diirrenstem. on the Danube." This castle is near Krems, and on the north bank of the Danube, a little west of Vienna. For further details as to the spot of Richard's captivity see R. Pauli, ' Geschichte von England,' iii. (1853), p. 250, and Alfons Huber, 'Ge- schichte von Oesterreich,' i. (1885), p. 278. Both quote various English annalists (Ralph de Diceto and Ralph of Coggediall). See also Th. Toeche, ' Kaiser Heinrich VI.' (1867, ' Jahrbiicher der Deutschen Ge- schichte '), pp. 261-2. Note that " Leopold, Duke of Austria," was of the house of Babenberg, which held the duchy of Austria from 976 to 1246, the Habsburgers only