Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/365

. XIL OCT. si,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

357

William Moseley was instituted to the rectory of Donhead St. Andrew in 1564 upon the deprivation of Roger Bolbet. I cannot find any record of the institution of Roger Bolbet.

A. R. MALDEN.

DUNCALFE (9 th S. xi. 289, 392, 476; xii. 270). As so much has been already collected about this name, these items may be added. In 1715 Hannah Duncalfe was a creditor, and in 1726 Humphrey Duncalfe, of London, merchant, an executor, of Francis Pitt, of Wakefield, cloth dresser (Taylor, ' Wakefield Manor,' 1886, pp. 186-9).

Samuel Foster, of Charterhouse Square, Middlesex, merchant, in his will, made and proved in 1752, mentions his estate in York- shire, and makes his nieces Mary Duncalf, sen., widow, and Mary Duncalf, iun., spinster, executrixes. He desires to be buried in his vault, near his late wife, in Highgate Chapel, with a marble monument and inscription.

W. C. B.

THACKERAY'S MOUSTACHE (9 th S. xii. 149, 212). In this connexion the following passage may well occupy a little space in ' 1ST. & Q.' It ^is quoted from Mr. Justin McCarthy's 'Literary Portraits from the Sixties,' in Harper's Magazine for the present month :

"The first time I ever saw Thackeray, except as the solitary figure on a lecturer's platform, he wore a thick moustache, and the moustache was of a dark colour, contrasting oddly with his white locks. That first sight of him thus unusually adorned was on the platform of the Lime Street (Station, Liver- pool, when he came down from London to go on board the Cunard steamer on his way to deliver his course of lectures in the United States. There were a few small groups of people gathered on the platform to get a glimpse of the great author as he passed out, and 1 well remember that one enthu- siastic young lady, who was personally quite unknown to him, went boldly up and pressed a bunch of roses into his hand. Nothing could be more graceful and genial than the manner in which Thackeray accepted this unexpected tribute, and took off his hat with a benignant smile in acknow- ledgment of the gift."

WALTER JERROLD.

" JEER " (9 th S. xi. 487). The verb schrauben, properly to screiv, in German seems to confirm my interpretation. It is used also in the sense of jeer. We speak in English of " screwing up one's face." E. S. DODGSON.

Poste Restante, Hamburg.

WAS MARAT A JEW? (9 th S. xii. 88, 236.) MR. M. L. R. BRESLAR'S indignant objection to MR. HEBB'S strange thought that Marat was a Jew is not surprising. It is not easy to explain seriously how that thought arose. Marat started life as a Calvinist, like his father and mother. This is the first attempt

to make him a Jew. Mr. Bax and MR. HEBB would make him a Roman legionary too. Where will his merits cease 1

MR. HEBB'S speculative query has brought the anomalous t in Marat's name into the field of conjecture. That is not surprising, either. There is no trace of Marat's name in any of the books about him to show that he used the t, till his ' Chains of Slavery' (second edition) and his medical tracts of 1775-6 ap- peared. Till then he had various reasons, which he admitted in later years, for con- cealing his name. But then he was equally ready to disclose it.

His patronymic Mara smacks strongly of Spain; but when in Edinburgh in 1769 a fact he only divulged in November, 1775 he saw in the distance a Scotch degree, and who could tell? perhaps an appointment in Paris. By the addition of the t Mara would at once become francise happy thought! in view of his hopes. When the degree did come years later the Amsterdam visit to Rey, to induce him to publish ' De 1'Homme,' at once bore fruit, and two medical works by Dr. J. P. Marat, M.D., of Church Street, Soho, assisted him to make a successful debut before the venal Beauzee, and become a royal count's doctor. This deception did not outwit every one. Though it enabled him to pose before his ami readers, in after years, as their high- souled concitoyen, it did not shield him from the sobriquet, among those who knew nim better, of " the Prussian spider," at which in September, 1792, we read, he was highly in- dignant.

In his early years Boudry was in Prussia. After his death the Swiss authorities curtailed his family patronymic to its proper dimen- sions, by forbidding the misleading t.

VIGILANS.

DAUGHTERS OF BOADICEA (9 th S. xi. 449; xii. 14). It may safely be said that the names of these ladies are unknown. Tacitus gives no names; Dio mentions no daughters; Orelli, Nipperdey, Furneaux, Roth, Momm- sen, mention no names. May I express regret that a contributor to ' N. & Q.' should countenance the fantastic and groundless form "Boadicea"? VIDA.

FARTHINGS (9 th S. xii. 169, 238, 292). Two or three months ago I saw in a well-known bank in the West-End of London one of the clerks counting and weighing a large heap of new bronze farthings, which had just come in. He explained to me that they were being distributed among their branch banks in response to the demands of customers.

J. B. W.