Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/422

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.NOTES AND QUEKIES. [9* s> IL NOV. 19, >9s.

Ambroise Pare, the first of surgeons, the pluckiest of operators, arrd the most modest of men. " Je le pansay Dieu le guarist," he used to say after he had saved a life like, for instance, the great Duke de Guise's when he was wounded in the face near Dormans : " I bandaged him God cured him." Ambroise Pare", the father of French surgery, was born in 1517 at Laval. He was apprenticed to a barber in Paris in 1532. He learnt to shave, dress hair, and bind wounds. In 1536 he was received as master barber, and opened a shop with the three regulation basins over the door. In 1552 he was appointed surgeon to King Henry II. In 1545 he published his first took, "La Methode de traicter les Playes faictes par les Hacquebutes et aultres Bastpns a Feu, par Ambroyse Pare, Maistre Barbier- Chirurgien a Paris." He was of the reformed religion, and Brant6me says that on St. Bar- tholomew's night Charles IX. himself saved him by hiding him in his chamber. He died in 1590. MYRMIDON.

The following notice of notable barbers is from a local newspaper of April, 1886 :

" William Winstanley, to whom we are indebted for the ' Lives of the English Poets,' began his career by soaping faces. Fair, who introduced coffee into England ; Dr. John Taylor, whose elo- quent voice so often sounded in St. Paul's ; Jean- Baptiste Belzoni, giant and explorer ; James Craggs, secretary of the South Sea Bubble ; Mr. Herbert Ingram, of the Illustrated London News ; Allan Ramsay, the 'Gentle Shepherd'; Lord Chan- cellor Sugden ; Lord Tenterden ; Jeremy Taylor ; Bizet, the composer of the opera ' Carmen,' were born and bred and were trained in barbers' shops."

RICHARD LAWSON. Urmston.

Surely the most celebrated barber of modern times was the " Comte de Meulant," Olivier le Dain. This able and unscrupulous right eye of Louis XI. was hanged on 21 May, 1484. He ought to be well known in England through ' Quentin Durward.'

GEORGE MARSHALL.

Sefton Park, Liverpool.

WOODEN PILLARS IN AN OLD CHURCH (9 th S. ii. 285). Oaken pillars to arcades in our old churches are not unique, although rare. MR. T. WILSON is quite right in using the word " chestnut " between inverted commas. The fact is, the old idea that chestnut was used in the construction of our mediaeval churches and in the roofs of our ancient baronial mansions has quite exploded. The only instance on record of the use of chestnut in the fifteenth century is the rood screen at Rodmersharn Church, near Sittingbourne, Kent. I remember once, as an Associate of

the Society of Architects, visiting with that body the great Cloth Hall at Ypres in Bel- gium, where there is undoubtedly the finest and largest timber roof in the world. The local city architect, who showed us over, assured us the wood was chestnut. At the risk of my neck, I climbed into the roof itself, and with my knife sliced off several chips from different parts. On my return home I planed these up, and on eacn and every one the " clash " of the oak was distinctly appa- rent. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter.

THE VIRGIN OF BRESSAU (9 th S. ii. 167). I do not know if it has been mentioned at one of the references given, but it may be worth while to state that the " Virgin " was not a mediaeval invention. A torture upon a similar plan is described by Polybius as devised by Nabis (' History,' xiii. 3).

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

Hastings.

SIR EDMONDBTJRY GODFREY (9 th S. ii. 367). I am shocked beyond the power of expres- sion by finding on a page of ' N. & Q.' this totally erroneous spelling of the name of that over-zealous magistrate whose death and the finding of his body on Primrose Hill caused so mighty a commotion in 1679 and a few years later. It is not only a fact that throughout the 'Catalogue of Satirical Prints in the British Museum,' wherever the com- piler had an option in the matter, the name of the " Protestant Martyr " is given as Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, but on the tablet erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey the inscription is in the latter form. More than this, it was written in the diary of Sir Edmund's father of his son's birth and names :

" His godfathers were my cousin John Berrie, Esq., Captain of the Foot Company of the Town of Lidd [Lydd ? Kent] : his other godfather was my faithful, loving friend, and my neighbour in Grubb Street, Mr. Edmund Harrison, the King's em- broiderer."

F. G. S.

PORTRAITS OF CROMWELL (9 th S. ii. 202). I imagine that the late Rev. J. de Kewe; Williams, of Hackney, amassed the largest and most representative collection of Crom- well pictures which has ever been got together. I well remember being invited in November, 1882, to visit his Cromwell Museum and there spending a long evening in his company. His residence in Paragon Road, Hackney, was redolent of Cromwell, and from the walls of almost every room the great Protector's features hung depicted. This