Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/403

 12 s. ix. OCT. 22, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 329 these were gifts by the sculptor during his lifetime ; her purchases at this sale were not important. In 12 lots she bought 66 prints for 25 7<s., and in two lots 28 drawings for 5 175. Neither adequate or sufficiently representative for the proposed memorial room. At this sale the purchases by J. T. Smith, Lots 171 and 172, designs by Angelica Kauffmann, are specially iden- tified. Nollekens was not a frequent corre- spondent ; apparently few of his letters survive; but amongst some MS. notes that have been received is an account and receipt in his hand. The latter repeats the substance of the first named and is as follows : Reed, the 9th of Augt. 1803 of the Worshipful Compy of Cordwainers the sum of Eighty pounds for a marble Vase and Pedestal to the memory of the late Mr. Came. 80. JOSEPH NOLLEKENS. ALECK ABRAHAMS. WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries in order that answers may be sent to them direct. CHAR-A-BANC. Daniel Wall's edition of Ebel's 'Switzerland' (London, 1820), at p. 173, says : The char-a-banc is a waggon provided with a long covered bench, on which you may either lie down or sit sideways, as in our long Bath coaches. For a long time they were much used in the Pays de Vaud ; but of late years they have been re- placed by another sort of vehicle called petits- chars, and in German Switzerland, Berner- Waegeli. These last are provided with one, two, or three small benches, placed in a transversal direction, and suspended by leathern thongs to the ladders which enclose the waggon. They are lighter and more commodious than the chars- a - bane, but they are much more liable to be upset. Of course, as may easily be imagined, the chars- d- banc are again in general use. What were " our long Bath coaches " like at the time ? The first quotation in the ' N.E.D.' is twelve years later than the above extract. In it G. Downes says that the char-a-banc " resembles an outside jaunting car bisected lengthwise." This description is not very lucid, but it certainly implies that the seats were at right angles to the driver's seat. The second quotation, from The Daily Telegraph of Oct. 25, 1864, runs : " The King's waggonette, or, being out of England, let us call it his char-a- banc." Here clearly the terms waggonette and char-a-banc are regarded as inter- changeable. Nevertheless the only sense of the word recognized by the ' N.E.D.' is the present one, viz., " a kind of long and [?] light vehicle with transverse seats looking forward." Mr. Ralph Straus, in ' Carriages and Coaches ' (London, 1912), at p. 273, writes: A very large waggonette, the brake, is a common enough object to-day, and is built in various forms. Sometimes a second seat is placed directly behind and parallel to the driver's seat. In some models these seats stretch back through- out the length of the carriage, in which case it is a char-a-banc. The modern char-a-banc is thus a direct descendant of its ancient rival the petit-char. It would be interesting if it could be ascer- tained when this type of vehicle was first introduced into this country, and when it first got its present name. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. CHARLES WITHER. I should be grateful for information personal to Charles Wither, who was born on July 24, 1684, at Hall Place, some four miles west of Basingstoke, Hants, where he died on Nov. 20, 1731, and was buried at Dean hard by. He married Frances Wavell of Winchester, who died in 1752, and was also buried at Dean. Their daughter Henrietta Maria (1714-1790) mar- ried, in 1741, Thynne Worsley, who died within four weeks of marriage, and in 1748 Edmund Bramstone of Boreham, Essex, who died in 1763 and was buried at Dean. Charles Wither was a descendant of George Wither the poet (1588-1667), who was born at Alton in Hampshire. J. PAUL DE CASTRO. 1, Essex Court, Temple. ASTLEY'S AND S ANGER'S CIRCUSES. Would one of your readers kindly say when Astley's, on the Surrey side of the water, came to an end ; whether S anger's circus re- placed it, and, if so, at what time ? Have both now ceased to exist ? G. F. WILSON. DR. FIFIELD ALLEN. Can anyone inform me as to the precise periods (day, month and year) during which this eighteenth- century divine, who died in 1764, held the archdeaconry of St. Albans and the vicarages of Hammersmith, Middlesex, and