Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/579

 12 s. ix. DEC. 10, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 477 " AKTEMUS WABD " (12 S. ix. 310, 375). In the reminiscences of Col. Henry Waiter- son of Kentucky, recently published and wholly authoritative, he shows that the name of the Massachusetts general Artemas Ward is a coincidence only. The original Arterrms Ward was an illiterate showman with a few animals, who exhibited in the country towns near Cleveland, Ohio. Browne was a journalist there and had the happy inspiration of writing imaginary letters to his papers as from the showman, with the latter' s own kind of spelling, which not only amused the public but gave Browne a mask for diverting foolery with any original pungencies he chose. That this is the fact, and the letters meant for a, local " hit " to be recognized by Cleve- landers, is shown by the opening of the famous first letter : " I'm movin' along slowly along towards your place." FOBBEST MOBGAN. Hartford, Conn,. U.S.A. ROBEBT HENBY NEWELL (12 S. ix. 273, 313, 374). Mr. Newell died in the summer of 1901. The exact date can never be known, for on the door of his apartment being forced he was found lying dead near it, having apparently been seized with apoplexy or heart failure some days before. He lived a lonely life, and had never recovered in soul from the desertion of his wife, Adah Isaacs Menken, whom he divorced only because she had left him as she did three others her first husband Menken, the pugilist Heenan, and Barclay of California simply because she speedily tired of them and of domestic life. Newell had her in mind in his imitation of " Owen Meredith," of which one verse runs : Claude, they tell me, should own my love : Well, I have loved him nearly a week ; Looking at one man longer than that Grows to be tiresome so to speak. FOBBEST MOBGAN. Hartford, Conn., U.S.A. NICKNAME OF WILLIAM PITT (THE YOUNGEB) (12 S. ix. 352). It appears to be possible that in the letter referred to there is a confusion of William Pitt the younger with William Pitt the elder, of whom, after his maiden speech in the House of Commons, Walpole, they tell us, declared, " We must muzzle this terrible cornet of horse." Pitt was at once cashiered and his commission cancelled. (See ' Chatham,' by Frederic Harrison (1905), p. 17.) He was a cornet in the 1st or King's Dragoon Guards. (See ' A History of the British Army,' by the Hon. J. W. Fortescue, vol. ii., pp. 20, 54.) Possibly the writer of the letter quoted applied the word " cornette " to Pitt the ] younger, taking it, of course wrongly, to be ia diminutive of "cornet," and so to be applicable to the son of the "cornet of horse." It need scarcely be said that, as to cavalry officers, the French word " cornette " and I the English "cornet" were synonymous, meaning the officer in a troop who carried STAVEBTON, Co. DEVON (12 S. ix. 272). I have only now just seen MB. GEOBGE C. i PEACHEY'S inquiry for a sight of a publica- 'tion giving an account of a body found 'whole and imputrid at Staverton 80 years I after burial. I am sorry I cannot give him access to the book, but what I take to be i the one in question is indexed as being pre- I No. 1290 of the Davidson Collection of j Pamphlets, in the following terms : p. 105. Staverton. Some Reflections on the j Causes and Circumstances that may retard or I prevent the putrefaction of Dead Bodies j Occasioned by an Account of a Body found entire and imputrid at Staverton in Devonshire, eighty - I one years after its interment. By J. Kirkpatrick, M.D., London. 1751. W. S. B. H. PBINCE LEE Boo (12 S. ix. 207, s.v. ' Statues and Memorials '; 256, 300). The effigy of Prince Lee Boo seems at one time to have served as a tobacconist's sign. In ' Handley Cross,' ch. Ixxii., p. 525 (ed. 1 carved Prince Le Boo nigger . ., six feet high, stout and well formed. He had a splendid diadem, full of parti-coloured feathers, and wore the dress of a savage ! chief." He was bought second-hand and became the sign of Mr. Bowker's tobacco shop. W. S., JB. Ithaca, N.Y. ' THE PBIVATE PAPEBS OF HENBY RYE- CBOFT ' ( 12 S. ix. 37 1 , 435). This volume was written during Gissing's residence in Exeter and is largely autobiographical. The ' Papers ' were first published in The Fortnightly Review, vol. Ixxi., 1902, under the title ' An Author at Grass.' They are full of incidents of the writer's daily life, as, for example, No. 3, which opens, " Sitting in my garden amid the evening scent of roses, I have read through Walton's ' Life
 * the standard. ROBEBT PIEBPOINT.
 * served at the Plymouth Institution, as
 * of 1845), is mentioned " a beautifully