Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/597

 12 s. vii. DEC. is, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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der weit ausschreitet " ; with two different t measures of length, the architectural and the cloth measure. The word is found in several Turkish tribes in Siberia and deriva- tives are formed from it; arshinla, "to measure by the arshin," "to make long strides " ; arshinlik, " a piece the length of an arshin.'- With the Osmanli the architec- tural arshin has a length of 29 1 in. ; the cloth arshin of about 28 in. (Redhouse, ' Turkish Dictionary '). A.

A LETTER OF THACKEBAY (12 S. vii. 448). This letter presents several difficulties.

1. It is dated 1841 and refers to a story heard by Thackeray in America. "Now Thackeray's first visit to America was in 1852.

2. It is written, we are told, to Tom Hood. The poet Hood died in 1845, seven years before Thackeray crossed the Atlantic.

3. It seems a natural inference from ' The Roundabout Paper,' 'On a joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood,' that Thackeray was not personally acquainted with Hood. At any rate he writes " I saw Hood once as a young man, at a dinner " ("of the Literary Fund], and refers to the single pun which Hood made on that occasion.

4. The letter is dated from Kensington, W., a familiar heading to Thackeray's letters in later days. But in 1841 ?

EDWARD BENSLY.

Surely the letter attributed to Thackeray by MR. KENNETH BINNS shouts alcud its spuriousness from end to end. It starts with being dated "Kensington, W.," in December, 1841, though it was not until 1856 that London was divided into districts for postal purposes. It goes on to mention something heard "when I was in America," though Thackeray did not pay his first visit to the United States until 1852. And it is written in a clumsy, and even vulgar, style which is utterly alien to the author of 'Vanity Fair.' The Australian Common- wealth Parliament Library deserves sym- pathy in its legacy. ALFRED ROBBINS.

MLLE. MERCANDOTTI, (?) COUNTESS OF FIFE (12 S. vii. 448). The newspaper of 1896 was mistaken. That admirable (and admirably indexed) work, 'The Maclise Portrait Gallery,' by William Bates, M.A., says (1898 issue, page 289) :

''The celebrated Hughes Ball, M.A.. commonly called, from his great wealth, the "Golden Ball,'" who had created a nine days' wonder in the

circles of fashion some [fifty] years before by marrying Mercandotti, the Andalusian Venus, the most charming of all the daughters of Terpsichore, reported, in the scandal of the day, to be a natural daughter of the Right Honourable the Earl of Fife."" The lady received mention in ' The English Spy,' by Bernard Blackroantle, 1825 (pp. 184, 203 Methuen's reprint, 1907), and there figures prominently in Robert Cruik- shank's plate of 'The Opera Green Room. 51 Page 203 has a foot-note denying the report of paternity above suggested, stating that Lord Fife adopted her and provided for her maintenance and instruction : '* extending his bounty and protection up to the moment of her fortunate marriage with her present husband."

The foot-note ends :

" It is due to tfte lady to add, that in every instance her conduct has been marked by the strictest sense of propriety, and that too in situa- tions where, it is said, every attraction was offered to have induced a very opposite course."

W. B. H.

For some reference to the Spanish dancer of this name also a picture of her see the ' Reminiscences of Captain Gronow (edition of 1889, vol. ii. pp. 91-92). She disappeared from the stage and in 1823 became Mrs. Ball Hughes giving rise to a couplet by Ainsworth : The fair damsel is gone ; and no wonder at all That, bred to the dance, she has gone to a ball.

Ball Hughes was a nephew of Admiral Hughes. R. B.

RICHARD MARSH (12 S. vi. 252 ; vii. 435). r As the Richard Marsh was alive when Williamson wrote to the Dean of Christ Church in May, 1669, he could not have been the Richard Marsh who was installed Dean of York in 1660, and died in 1663, as- suggested by MR. HANSON. G. F. R. B.

FRANCIS BURN (12 S. vii. 450). There was no Chief Baron of the Exchequer of this name, either in England or Ireland in the eighteenth century. G. F. R. B.

THE TRAGEDY OF NEW ENGLAND (12 S vii. 446). It is necessary in speaking of the religious persecutions in New England to> distinguish between the colony of New Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay- Colony. The term " Pilgrim Fathers " (used in the note referred to) is, strictly speaking, applicable to the settlers forming the colony first-named only, of which the leaders were Brewster, Bradford, &c., and I believe I am.