Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/71

 9*8. XL JAN. 24, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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was sixpence. It consists of but sixteen pages, including advertisements, of which there are only fifty-six. The first number contains one of Leech's spirited hunting sketches and two sketches by Ansdell. The advertisements tell us that * Uncle Tom's Cabin' is being played at Drury Lane as well as at two other theatres, that Madame Vestris has the management of the Lyceum, Charles Kean of the Princess's, Phelps of Sadler's Wells, Madame Celeste of the Adelphi, and Shepherd and Creswick of the Surrey. The Royal Polytechnic Institute is flourish- ing under the patronage of Prince Albert; and in a corner at the bottom of a column we find ' Mr. Albert Smith's Ascent of Mont Blanc.' John Chapman advertises the Westminster Review, and evidently intends to try to cut out the bookseller : " When payment is made direct to the publisher for a year in advance, four numbers of the Review will be delivered for ll. t or postage free ll. 4s." The published price 'was six shillings per number.* The news of the week is pithily told, and at a glance we get an idea of the world of 1853. Dizzy, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Lord Derby as his chief, on February 27th, 1852, and thought he had "come to stay," set Messrs. Banting, the Government upholsterers, to work to make the official resi- dence in Downing Street light and gay, and brilliant with modern furniture. Before Christmas the fatal division came, and Gladstone reigned in his stead. u Farewell to the dawning visions of the resuscitated glories of a Holland House on the Conservative side, and all those intellectual coteries that might have assembled in that hitherto ' unused spot,' under the auspices of a literary Chancellor of the Exchequer." It is sad to relate that some ladies seemed to enjoy Dizzy's discomfiture. The Earl of Aberdeen becomes Prime Minister, and states in the House of Lords that "at home the mission of the Government would be to maintain and extend free-trade principles, and to pursue the com- mercial and financial system of the late Sir Robert Peel." Under music, regret is ex- pressed that England possesses no School of Music. The news from France is the Em- peror's decree that, should he die without leaving an heir to the throne, the succession shall pass to his uncle Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte and to his descendants, from male

sellers at John Chapman's on the 4th of May, 1852, for the purpose of hastening the removal of the trade restrictions on the commerce of literature is graphic- ally described in ' The Life of George Eliot.'
 * The memorable meeting of authors and book-

to male, by order of birth, and to the entire exclusion of the females. Prince Jerome's allowance was to be one million francs per annum, with the Palais Royal as resi- dence ; Prince Napoleon's, 300,000 francs ; and the Princess Mathilde's (Demidoff), 200,000. Photography first appeared in the second volume, when the champion of the Thames was drawn from a daguerreotype by Mayall.

In November, 1853, the Field became the property of Benjamin Webster, of the Adelphi Theatre, but the change of proprietorship did not bring prosperity. It was, in truth, a very poor sixpenny worth ; but, as the article in the Jubilee number states, news- paper enterprise in those days was hampered by the Stamp Act and by a monstrous paper duty.

Towards the end of the second year of its existence Mr. Serjeant Cox purchased the pro- perty, and in the number for November 25th, 1854, it was announced that the paper had passed into new hands. Its address stated that " the Field would be a family paper, sedulously weeded of whatever a gentleman should be unwilling to place in the hands of

his children It will make no endeavour

to become the newspaper of ' the man about town,' but to be that of ' the man out of town.' " Readers were invited " to express their opinion as to the scheme indicated, and to forward any suggestions." To this invita- tion there was a ready response, and, with but four exceptions, the communications were couched in language of warm commendation.

In 1857 Mr. John Henry Walsh took the editorial control ; he was an all-round sports- man, and in the previous year had published under the name of " S tonehenge " 'British Rural Sports.' He is described in the article on the Jubilee as being a "heaven-born"editor, a man in a thousand for the position to which he was appointed. This was his first connexion with newspaper work. Born in 1810, he had prac- tised as a doctor in Worcestershire for twenty- five years, but he had a great liking for sport, and indulged in it as far as his professional engagements admitted. The Field had at first paid little attention to angling, but in 1856 Francis Francis came upon the scene, and he and James Lowe, Frank Buckland both members of the Field brotherhood and others, were successful in working out problems of fish culture, and now angling forms an important feature of the contents. Angling, in common with all sports, has largely increased of late years so much so that it now supports a paper of its own, the Fishing Gazette. In this the contents of Mr. Edward Marston's delightful little holiday