Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/99

 9th S. IV. Sept. 2, '99.] 195 NOTES AND QUERIES. ask him if it was authentic. I did not doubt it; but his reply must, I think, be convincing. He says :— ' " En ce qui concerne le moulage de la tete de Napoleon mort, fait a St. Helene par le Dr. An- tomarchi. je m'etonne qu'on en puisse discuter l'authenticite, car le fait est positif; et mon pere avait deja chez lui, quand j'etais tout petit enfant, une reproduction en platre de ce moulage, pareille au bronze du Musee de la Monnaie. Je n'ai ici aucun document, mais vous pouvez etre tout a fait affirmatif. L'Amiral Hernoux, qui fut charge d'aller prendre a St. Helene, avec le Prince de Joinville, lea restes de Napoleon, etait l'ami tres intime de mon pere, et c'eat peut-etre de lui que nous venait le platre, qui doit maintenant etre a Toulouse chez les enfans de ma sceur." I would add that it is most reasonable to suppose that a cast of Napoleon's face would have been taken immediately after his death, and, fuither, the fact that the editor of the St. Helena Guardian had never heard of a cast having been taken is not, after a lapse of nearly eighty years, of much account. James Cull. 47, Phillimore Gardens, Kensington. Sir Richard Edgcumbe thinks it " passing strange " that the present editor of the isle of St. Helena's only newspaper (the St. Helena Guardian) at a recent date should state in print he had "never heard of a cast being taken of the great Emperor's face after death." Perhaps it is even more strange to record that when I visited the island last summer—Jamestown, its one little port, and the surroundings have a population of about 4,000 souls—no such thing as a guide-book of any kind to St. Helena was obtainable, and, as a matter of fact, if I except M. L. Morilleau, the French Consul, and his charming family, no resident appeared to know anything about Napoleon's residence there. Yet, in the interests of history, it is better for the natives not to assume a knowledge they do not possess than to go to the other extreme. On the field of Waterloo sundry touts, more worldly wise in their day and generation than are these hospitable islanders, sell bullets and soldiers' buttons, probably made a few weeks before in Birmingham, which they solemnly declare were dug up upon the battle-ground the previous day ! There can be no manner of doubt that a plaster cast was taken of the dead man's face. At the same time it is a matter of pass- ing interest, maybe, to record that seventy- eight years and six days after the death in question the editor of St. Helena's one little newspaper recorded in his journal that he had never heard of the circumstance. How low have the mighty fallen ! Harry Hems. Fair Park, Exeter. Arrest for Debt in Ireland (9th S. iv. 29V —The incident is not quite correct as quoted. The excellent original forms one of O'Shaugh- nessy's "yarns in 'Charles O'Malley' (chap, lxxxviii.). George Marshall. Sefton Park, Liverpool. Fortescue Family (9th S. iv. 109).—Sir Edmund Fortescue, of Fallapit, Bart., had one son, Sandys, and -two daughters, Sarah and Jane. Sir Sandys, the second baronet, had one child, Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Sylyard, of Deleware, co. Kent, Bart., and had a son, Thomas, who died in infancy. Sarah died unmarried. Jane married Wil- liam Coleman, of Gournhay, co. Devon, and had issue a son, William, and a daughter, Jane, who died unmarried. William had a son, William, who was a minor in 1741. If there are any " heirs of his body" it is through the last-mentioned William, but I cannot find any further particulars respecting him. John Radcliffe. "Annotto" (9th S. iv. 125).—It is strange that there is no quotation for this word in the 'H.E.D.' earlier than 1682. The first mention of it that I have met with is much earlier. It occurs in " An Account of a Voyage to Guiana, perform'd by Robert Harcourt Esq. ; of Stanton-Harcourt in the County of Oxon: Written to Prince Charles," in Harris's Collection. The exact date of Har- court's narrative I cannot give. He exacted, however, from one of the chiefs of the coun- try, on behalf of King James, a yearly duty of " a tenth part of all Tobacco, Cotton-Wool, Annoto, and other Commodities." He appears to use the name as a native one. After speak- ing of a berry " which the Indians call Kellette," of the plant Uppea, the leaf Icari, the wood Pira timinere, he goes on :— "The Dyers have all the main Ingredients for Colours that can well Vie wish'd for; the Berry Annoto, rightly prepar'd, gives a perfect Orange- tawny in Silk, and there s another that dyes a blue/ If, as I presume, the other names are native to the country, this one would seem to be so. Among spellings not given in the 'H.E.D.' is the corrupt form ornetta, sometimes met with. C. C. B. Epworth. A Legend (9th S. iv. 129).—When St. Louis sent Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, on an embassy " he met a grave matron on the way " (Jer. Taylor, vol. ii. p. 545): " The bishop met a woman on the way, grave, and fantastic, and melancholy" (vol. iv. p. 477). There is no sup- position of a " celestial figure." Eden, in his