Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/80

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. x. JOT.Y 26, 1902.

very few careful commentators on Dickens, was of opinion that the " editor " of the ' Pick- wick Papers ' borrowed the name Snpdgrass from one Gabriel Snodgrass, a shipbuilder of Chatham. Gabriel, it will be remembered, also occurs in ' Pickwick ' as the Christian name of Grub, the sexton. Col. Mockler- Ferryman, editor of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry Magazine, informs me that a Capt. Snodgrass, who, as likely as not, was a relation of the aforesaid Gabriel, attained some dis- tinction in the Peninsular war as leader of a Portuguese regiment. Young Dickens's know- ledge of military Chatham was mostly picked up between 1817 and 1827, when the Peninsula and Waterloo were still things to talk about. The Oxfordshire Light Infantry is com- posed of the 43rd and 52nd regiments, two of the three regiments mentioned in ' Pick- wick '; and I may add that one of the sisters of Mr. Spong, of Cobtree, who is believed to have suggested the character of " Old Wardle," married Capt. (afterwards Field-Marshal Sir) William Rowan, of the 52nd, whose uncle and two brothers served in the same regi- ment, and who celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday at the battle of Waterloo. It has always seemed to me an interesting coinci- dence that 'Pickwick' and 'Vanity Fair' the two most popular works of the two most popular novelists of the Victorian era both touch on military life at Chatham, and while one brings the cannon's roar of Waterloo more nearly home to us than any history, the other gives the honour of inviting Mr. Jingle to Rochester to the 52nd the regiment which claims that it routed the last charge of the Imperial Guard. HAMMOND HALL.

CIPHER-STORY BIBLIOGRAPHY (9 th S. ix. 509). It may interest DR. KRUEGER to know that before Mrs. Gallup's days a 'Biblio- graphy of the Bacon-Shakespeare Contro- versy, with Notes and Extracts,' was compiled by Mr. W. H. Wyman (Cincinnati, Peter G. Thomson, 1884). G. F. R. B.

NAPOLEON'S FIRST MARRIAGE (9 th S. ix. 347, 371). Some account of this romantic inci- dent is to be found in the 'Life of Napo- leon,' by George Moir Bussey, vol. i. p. 43 (London, 1840), illustrated with two vignette engravings after Horace Vernet. One repre- sents Eugene Beauharnais when a b )y begging his father's sword from General Bonaparte in 1795, and the other depicts the old negress, an Obi woman in the island of Martinique, prophesying to Josephine when a girl that "sne should one day become

greater than a queen, and yet outlive her ignity." A lady of high rank, to whom

Tosephine had mentioned the matter, related Napoleon was just beginning to attract general notice. Her name is given as Marie Josephine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, and she s said to have been married when very young x) Viscount Beauharnais, who was guillotined! in 1794.
 * his circumstance to Sir Walter Scott when

In Thiers's ' History of the Consulate and Empire' (book vi.). translated by Thomas W. Redhead, the prophecy is given in a different
 * orm : " On this subject she recalled the

strange prediction of a woman, a sort of pythoness then in vogue, 'You will occupy ihe first place in the world, but only for a brief period.'" JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

NewDourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

MOURNING SUNDAY (9 th S. ix. 366, 390, 497). Quite fifty years ago this was the custom in all the Derbyshire villages, and is still ontinued, though hardly to the same extent. On the Sunday after the " berryin' " the whole family, together with those who had re- sponded to the " funeral askings," met at the house where the death had occurred. Funeral cakes or finger biscuits, with a few glasses of elderberry wine, were usually passed round, and then the whole party went to church, the nearest to the dead heading the proces- sion. Seats were reserved for them oy the sexton, who showed them to their places. All sat, and usually remained seated during the whole of the morning service, the women with downcast heads and kerchiefs to their eyes. In those days all the " berryin's " were " b't parson," and chapel folk went to church like the rest as a rule ; but chapel folk had also " berryin' Sundays," or else the mourners went to church in the morning and to chapel in the afternoon. The customs varied some- what, but, as a rule, the family and mourners took little or no part in the services. Some- times male mourners not relations did not enter the church, but waited in the church- yard until the " berryin' party " came out at the end of the service. The Sunday was always called " Berryin' Sunday."

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

In a parish that I know in South- West Yorkshire it is customary for " mourners " to come to church on the Sunday after the funeral, and to occupy the front seat in the have. When the present vicar first came to the parish in 1864, all sat through the whole of the service, but now Church people do as the rest of the congregation do. Dissenters sit still all the time. If offered Prayer-books they do not know how to use them, but they