Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/238

 194

NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. SEPT. 4, 1920.

fae died. Other Napoleonic subjects painted by him were 'The Return from Elba,' ' Napoleon at Waterloo,' and 'Napoleon dictating his Memoirs to General Gourgaud.'

F. GORDON ROE. Arts Club, 40 Dover Street, W. 1.

Charles Baron de Steuben was a protege of Stephanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden, and came to Paris about the year 1807. His title of baron was a Napoleonic creation, and he painted many portraits of the great Emperor's nobility. He left Paris after Napoleon's first abdication, and tiid not return until 1831. His picture of the ' Death of Napoleon ' was frequently engraved in Paris from 1831 to 1835, and it was "given" as a "supplement " in some French journals of the period. Baron de 'Steuben was in Florence during 1823-25, .and was patronised by Madame Mere (Napoleon's mother). This is probably the period of the picture. The original was /on view at a Parisian picture dealer's exhibition during the spring of 1835, and
 * may be still in some collection in France.

My maternal grandmother, who passed -away in her sleep in the winter of 1914 just
 * &> few weeks before reaching her 100th birth-

day, had a framed copy of the oleograph in her bed-room. It was presented by Baron de Steuben to her father, the brother of tha great-grandfather of the victorious General Weygancl. ANDREW DE TERNANT

COL. MELCHIOB GUY DICKENS (12 S. vi. 70). This gentleman was maternal grand- father of Mary Ann Costello, mother of George Canning, and it was from his house -that she was married to George Canning, pere, of the Middle Temple. The marriage took place at Marylebone Church, and The Gentleman's Magazine for May 1768, des- cribed the bride as "of Wigmore Street." The relationship is mentioned by Robert Bell (who gives the name as Guydickens) in his ' Life of Canning,' to show that the -assertion frequently made by the states- man's political enemies that his mother was a person of "low birth " had no foundation in fact A correspondent of The Leisure Hour writing with similar intent in 1859 Tefer^ed to him as General Guydickens, probably confusing him with his son, Major- General Gustavus Guy Dickens, mentioned by your contributor, and stated that "it was his mansion in South Audley Street she [Canning's mother] quitted to become Mrs 'Canning,"

Mr. Frank H. Hill, in his ' George Canning * /English Worthies,' edited by Andrew Lang, Longsmans Green, 1887) calls him Sir Guy Dickens, and says he "appears to be the Colonel Guy Dickens mentioned in Carlyle's 'Frederick the- Great.' '

Mrs. Canning, to whom the statesmaa was a devoted son until her death in 1827, five months before his own, after his birth went on the stage. She subsequently twice re -married, her second husband being Samuel Reddish, the actor, and her third Richard Hunn, a silk mercer of Plymouth. From the third marriage my wife is descended. FRED. R. GALE.

Crooksbury, Fitzjohn Avenue, High Barnet.

FRENCH TITLES (12 S. vii. 110). A propos of French titles it may be interesting to note a fact that judging from contem- porary literature even in France does not seem generally known. The old French noblesse did not address or refer to an equal as ''de " anything. For instance the Comte de Guiche was '* Guiche " and signed himself either Cte de Guiche or plain Guiche. And that is the custom among old French families now-a-days, although it may be that some laterjjor doubtful nobles adhere to the ' par- ticle." After all, notwithstanding the cus- tom of English titles with " de " as " de Vesci " and others, it is obviously the proper course. You could not call Lord Morley " of Blackburn " in conversation or writing.

B.

THE WORD " PREMIER " (12 S. vii. 150). Mr. Gladstone supplies by anticipation a reply to F. H. C.'s question. In an article published in The North American Review for September, 1878, written avowedly for the purpose of explaining and expounding British governing institutions to the Ameri- can public, he says :

" The breaking down of the great offices of State by throwing them into commission, and last among them of the Lord High Treasurer-ship after the time of Harley, Earl of Oxford, tended, and may probably have been meant, to prevent or retard the formation of a recognised Chiefship in the Ministry which even now we have not learned to designate by a true English word though the use of the imported phrase ' Premier ' is at least as old as the poetry of Burns.

The word Prime Minister itself, Sir William Anson tells us, is first found in the writings of Smith, with a recognition of its novelty " those who are now called "Prime Ministers." /Anson's 'Law and Custom of the Constitution, ii. The Crown.') It does