Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/90

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. JAN. 29, '98.

life !' You speak in your article of the curious decorations on the front of the house. These were works in bas-relief by Mr. Sievier, who was by pro- fession a sculptor. Some of his works in marble are still fairly well known over England, and the gigantic Christ on the Cross in Carrara marble at the Alexandra Palace is his work. Mr. Sievier, though, was hardly the ' opulent Frenchman ' you designate him. Nor was it supposed that he had secreted scientific instruments, although he had a collection of curious things in the laboratory which he built at the bottom of the large garden, which building is now the factory of Messrs. Betts & Co. In the garden, when excavations take place, will be found a complete human body or skeleton, in addi- tion to various portions of bodies used at different times for experimentation with the electric battery, induction coil, &c., Mr. Sievier having worked here with Faraday and others."

I do not think Mr. Fagg has done justice to his grandfather's many inventions and theories that have been born, thought of, or worked out in that old house and the factory at the end of the garden, and I imagine I am within the mark when I say that many a Lancashire fortune has had its rise or initia- tive in that old property. If it were possible to get any one to throw a light on the many schemes that have been conceived there it would be a great surprise to many.

W. J. GADSDEN.

Crouch End.

P.S. The Middlesexand Hertfordshire Notes and Queries only mentions in its bibliography the Evening News of 27 August, 1897.

The following paragraph appeared in the Daily Chronicle of 26 August last :

"The 'housebreakers' have started the demoli- tion of the old house at the corner of Holloway Road and Elthorne Road, Upper Holloway, known to a great many as ' Claude Duval's house.' It is nearly opposite the ' Mother Redcap.' the house mentioned by Drunken Barnaby in his doggerel verses. Elthorne Road (formerly Birkbeck Road) leads to Hornsey Road, where formerly stood a house known as ' The Devil's House,' in which ' the dashing highwayman ' was said to have dwelt. The house in Holloway Road is not universally believed to have been occupied by Duval, some preferring the tradition that the occupant was Dick Turpin, and allotting the adjoining stable to Black Bess. Seeing that it is about 230 years since Duval's fantastic funeral at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, the house must be very old to have been his. Dick Turpin certainly haunted the neighbourhood 160 years ago, and the story of his occupation of the house seems most credible. Both men knew the district well, and it is possible both stories are correct."

The house formerly known as Duval's House was situate on the east side of Hornsey Koad, between Tollington Road and Seven Sisters Road, and was pulled down in 1871. The association of this house with the high- wayman Claude Duval was a popular error,

Sornsey Lane was, it is true, formerly called Duval's Lane, and is so described to this day n legal documents ; but it would appear that Duval was a corruption of Devil : for in a survey and plan of the manor of Highbury, made by order of the Prince of Wales, son of James I., the lord of the manor, in the year L611 (that is to say, fifty -eight years before Duval expiated his misdeeds on the scaffold), Devil's Lane, and is described as having been snown in ancient writings by the name of
 * he house is called the Devil's House in

"Lower place being an old house enclosed

with a mote and a little orchard within."

The house seems to have been the manor tiouse of the manor of Tollentone, which was removed to a site on higher ground to the south-east, hence the name of Highbury. Nelson, in his history, published in 1811, referring to Duval's House, which was at that time used as a tavern, and had a tea-garden attached, remarks :

"Between thirty and forty years ago [about 1750-60] the surrounding moat, which was of con- siderable width, and filled with water, was passed by means of a long wooden bridge. The house has lately been fitted up in the modern taste, and the moat nearly filled with earth, and added to the garden which surrounds the dwelling." ' Hist. Islington,' p. 175.

The house was known as the Devil's House so late as the year 1767, when, as appears from a letter in the Public Advertiser of 23 May in that year, " the landlord, by a peculiar turn of invention, had changed the Devil's House to the Summer House, a name it is for the future to be distinguished by."

JOHN HEBB.

Canonbury, N.

SHAKSPEARIANA. 1 OTHELLO,' I. i. 21.

A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife. In this line is it not hinted that the fact of Othello's having a fair wife makes it unsafe to retain such a man as Michael Cassio in the close relation of lieutenant ; that such a cir- cumstance, in itself, is almost enough to damn him for the place ? lago often dwells upon Cassio's attractive personality.

' OTHELLO,' I. iii. 262-6.

Vouch with me Heaven, I therefore beg it not To please the pallate of my appetite ; Nor to comply with heat the yong affects In my defunct, and proper satisfaction. But to be free, and bounteous to her minde. Lines 264 and 265 paraphrased, read : " Nor do I beg it to comply with warmth of affection in my young wife, in the absence, through age, of my proper [own] satisfaction." Line 264