Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/322

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. i. APRIL ie,

berg is a pair of wings charged with bends, while the crest of Hutter is a single wing charged with a tent. There is certainly nothing in the arms to suggest that the two families were related, and any statement to that effect can only be surmise, for I believe 1 am correct in saying that no relationship has yet been proved. LEO CULLETON,

LINWOOD'S PICTURE GALLERIES (8 th S. xii. 449, 517). David Copperfield seems to have been rather bored by this exhibition when he attended his old nurse Peggotty thither. He afterwards remembered it chiefly, with- out commendation of any of its component parts, as a " mausoleum of needlework, favour- able to self-examination and repentance" (see chap, xxxiii. of his 'Personal History' in Charles Dickens's transcript). Thackeray, too, in his sparkling essay on the 'Leech Pictures,' reprinted in his 'Works ' from the Quarterly Review, No. 191, of December, 1854, turns up his nose sarcastically at this tame great-grandmother's treat for girls, and at other maudlin shows of the period, such as "West's Gallery" and the waxwork (not Tussaud's) in Fleet Street, the latter of which gloried in a refreshing group of "the dead baby and the Princess Charlotte lying in state." As germane to the subject in hand, I noticed some time ago in a bookseller's catalogue* the following two items of needle- work, viz. : " Map of Europe divided into its several States, according to, <fec., by Anne Edgecumbe, 1807," and " Map of England and Wales, Martha Matthews fecit, April 19, 1784," both described as "beautifully em- broidered in coloured silks on a silk ground." I dimly remember one or two faded speci- mens of some such creations as still neglectedly extant in a rambling old country mansion near Hurley, in Berkshire, thirty or forty years ago. But a generation of young ladies (with a chance bishop among them) which bustles along on the " bike " is little likely, one may suppose, to recover a taste for painfully toil- ing at such wearisome and eye -torturing tasks as these. A pleasant canter on horse- back, or even a spurt on the parvenu "wheel," through pleasant country scenes in the fresh bracing air, is worth a hundred worsted sheep and shepherdesses, or beautifully embroidered silken maps, which at best must soon become a very weariness of the flesh both to giver and receiver, however scarce at the present day and desirable in collections of curiosities of a bygone age. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.


 * ^Karslake's * Charing Cross Catalogue,' No. 1,

THE GOLDEN KEY (8 th S. xii. 408 ; 9 th S. i. 98). The allusion to the "key" occurs not in Browne's 'Britannia's Pastorals,' but in Henry Peacham's 'Minerva Britanna,' 1612, p. 38. The key is there figured with a pair of wings overt attached, like the talaria of Mercury, and accompanied by the following lines : The Waightie Counsels, and affaires of state,

The wiser mannadge, with such cunning skill, Though long locked up, at last abide the fate,

Of common censure, either good or ill : And greatest secrets, though they hidden lie, Abroad at last, with swiftest wings they flie.

But would not the key obviously be repre- sented as "golden," whether it were symbolical of a knowledge of the secrets of state or of the secrets in the possession of those who wield the magic wand of heal- ing ? Even as a trade sign whether of book- sellers, as possessing in some degree the key of knowledge in general, or of chemists and often the old practitioners, as possessing in the same degree the key to health, or as the symbol of St. Peter, like the cross keys in the Papal arms it is always, I. think, " golden."

J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.

The transferred meaning is intelligible enough. But may not the saying have been connected originally with the badge of office worn by the Lord Chamberlain, that golden key which the Duke of Devonshire tore off, " boiling with anger," as Macaulay relates 1 EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

Hastings.

ROTTEN Row, NOTTINGHAM (8 th S. xii. 347 ; 9 th S. i. 217). Rotten Rows are nearly as plentiful as High Streets, and ' N. & Q.' has provided much evidence and many guesses. See 1 st S. i. 441 ; ii. 235 ; v. 40, 160 ; 2 nd S. iv. 358; 3 rd S. ix. 213, 361, 443; xii. 423, 509. There was a Ratton Row at Howden, 1680, and another at Beverley, Poulson's 'Beverlac,' 1829, ii. 812. It would be rash to say that all these are derived from one source. But there is one possible derivation which has not y^t been suggested and has something in its favour. Why should it not be the Red Row? There was in Hull a family named Rotten- herring, which gave its name to a staith or landing-place on the river Hull. The tempta- tion to bring stale fish into the market may have been greater then than now; but the old form of the name proves that this ancient Hull merchant had nothing to do with ancient fish. It was Rothenherring, i. e., Red-herring. So there was a German painter named Rothenamer, sometimes printed Rotten- hammer ; see ' Peintres Celebres,' Tours, 1857. He is entered under both names in Holes 'Brief Biographical Dictionary,' 1866 <cf.