Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/133

 9 th S. II. AUG. 13, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

125

in one of his famous speeches, is quaint and curious, and smacks of the monkish days. It may be of interest to note that it is alluded to by Shakespeare in ' The Tempest,' II. ii., as though it were well understood at that time : . "Stephana. Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy ! This is a devil, and no monster : I will leave him ; I have no long spoon."

G. W. JACKSON.

Walthamstow.

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S VIEW OF FRENCH FLIRTING. I find this item in the Journal des Dames et des Modes for 28 February, 1822, and it seems to me worth preserving in ' N. & Q.' as a contribution to the comparative history of manners :

" Qu'avez-voxis fait, demandoit-on A M mo I)***, de cc brillant cortege de jeunes-gens qui nagueres peuploit vos salons et assistoit a vos fetes ? Je ne les vois plus, ils ont eu peur ! Vows voulez vous moquer tie moi ? Non, ecoutez bien : ma sceur est a la campagne, mes cousines voyagent en Italic ; plusieurs autres de mes amies sont en deuil ; ma societ^ de femmes, dans ces derniers terns, ne se composoit que d'Anglaises ; je n'en vois que de bien elevees et qui de plus sont jolies et aimables ; mais elles ont une singuliere id^e de nos jeunes-yens. Des que ceux-ci leur ont fait un compliment sur leur toilette, des qu'ils ramassent leur gant ou leur eventail, elles les croyent ^perdument amoureux, et

parlent de mariage h, present ma solitude est

expliquee."

Yet this flirting was of some effect, for we read later the following jest in the same periodical (15 November, 1828) :

" Jamais, disait une demoiselle qui a dejk depasse 1'age de la majorite, les Anglais ne nous ont fait autant de mal que depuis que nous sommes en paix avec eux. Je ne vois pas de quoi vous avez a vous plaindre? Us ont importo cnez nous vingt car- gaisons d'heritieres de toute espece qui nous ont eiilevo nos maris."

H. GAIDOZ.

22, Rue Servandoni, Paris.

WIRE IN BOOKBINDING. When the use of wire in bookbinding came into vogue, about twenty years since, there were notices of it in 'N. & Q., 5 th S. xii. ; 6 th S. i., ii. In the last instance there was an expression of dis- approval, but in the previous cases there was a favourable account of it. It seema to me that it has come into general use at least for books on their publication without sufficient attention to one common defect. The wire rusts and corrodes the paper where it touches it. With every possible care for the preservation of books in libraries generally, this becomes apparent not only from the damp of any library which is un- favourably placed, but from the varying state of the atmosphere. No librarian who cares for his books, who " treats them as though he

loved them," will use it in his binding, bufc he cannot help their being so sent out by publishers. ED. MARSHALL, F.S.A.

BRASSES. In no carping or fault-finding spirit, but from a wish that the few good brasses still remaining should be preserved, I call the attention of antiquaries, through the medium of ' N. & Q., to the fact that at Roydon Church, Essex, the fine brass of Thomas Colt, 1471, has had an unsightly heating apparatus placed on it. On the cuirass is an early example of the lance rest. An illustration of this brass is given in Gough's 'Sepulchral Monuments,' vol. ii. The Roydon brasses have fallen on evil times,- as inside the altar rails another brass of the Colt family has been polished in a manner more calculated to please a model housewife than an antiquary. MATILDA POLLARD.

Belle Vue, Bcngeo.

REMARKABLE LAPSUS CALAMI. In 'Dombey and Son,' chap, v., after describing the "frosty christening" of Dombey//*-, Dickens adds " The register signed, and the fees paid," &c. The novelist was surely napping over his pen when he committed those two blunders, for in the first place no register is signed at baptism in the sense in which he evidently uses the phrase the officiating minister alone adding his signature to the entry ; and in the next, there are no fees exacted or expected at such a ceremony. The only possible exception lies in a request for a copy of the entry, which is unusual on such an occasion. Dickens must have known these simple facts, to ignore which argues wanton carelessness. Genius hardly excuses, but rather emphasizes the lack of that infinite painstaking which is said to be its very essence. J. B. S.

Manchester.

Fox's AUNTS. It is a curious fact, perhaps not generally known or remembered, though doubtless familiar to Macaulay's omniscient schoolboy, that Charles James Fox had two aunts, of whom one died in 1655 and the other in 1826, the deaths of these two ladies having thus been separated by the extra- ordinary interval of 171 years. The par- biculars of this remarkable case are, of course, accessible to all students of biography ; but it may be a convenience to readers of ' N. & Q.' if I briefly recapitulate them here.

The celebrated statesman's grandfather, Sir Stephen Fox, was born in 1627 ; and in 1654, being then twenty-seven years old, he married his first wife, who is described by the historian of the family as "a Sisterof the King's Surgeon." By her he had a numerous family, the eldest