Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/130

 104 NOTES AND QUERIES. p» s. VL A™. 11, woo. " Venator. Sir, we are all BO happy as to have a fine fresh, cool morning, and I hope we shall be the happier in the other's company. And. Gentlemen, that I may not lose your's, I shall either abate or amend my pace to enjoy it; knowing that, as the Italiatw say : Good company in a journey makes the way to seem shorter."—Chap. i. The proverbial saying is printed in italics in ray favourite copy of the book, Major's second edition^ 1824, fcap. 8vo. (quoted from Allibone's ' Dictionary'), rich in copper- plates and woodcuts. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. GEORGE ELIOT'S HOUSE AT RICHMOND.— There is a board in front of the house in Park Shot, Richmond, near the L. and S.W. railway station, where George Eliot and G. H. Lewes lived, and where the former wrote some of her earlier novels, announcing that the site, with the site of two houses ad- joining, is to be let on a building lease, which means that the houses will shortly be pulled down. The house, which is one with considerable character, perhaps about 150 years old, is much dilapidated, having been unoccupied for some time, but is not past repair. It is near the Corporation Baths, and might be utilized for some purpose in connexion with the municipality at a moderate expenditure, and it is to be hoped that some steps may be taken to preserve the house as a place of historic interest. Mr. Cross, in his 'Life of George Eliot,' says:— " On the 19th Sept. [1855] they (George Eliot and G. H. Lewes) left East Sheen, and after spending a couple of weeks at Worthing, for a sea change, they took rooms at 8, Park Shot, Richmond, which re- mained their home for more than three years. Here some of George Eliot's most memorable literary work was accomplished. Both she and Mr. Lewes were now working very hard for what would bring immediate profit, as they had to support, not only themselves, but his children and their mother. They had only one sitting-room between them ; and I remember, in a walk on St. George's Hill, near Weybridge, in 1871, she told me that the scratching of another pen used to affect her nerves to such a degree that it nearly drove her wild."—G. Eliot's ' Life,' i. 385. 'Amos Barton," the first of the series of tales entitled 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' was written at the house No. 8, Park Shot, where it was begun on 22 Sept., 1856, and finished on 5 Nov. following. As George Eliot wrote in her 'Diary': "Sept., 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then that I began to write fiction." JOHN HEBB. Cononbury Mansions, N. ACTRESSES. (See 9th S. v. 514.)—In a journal of the Rev. Richard Madox, chaplain on board the Leicester, one of the four ships under the command of Edward Fenton, admiral, which set forth on a voyage intended towards China in 1582, and summarized in the ' Calendar of State Papers, Colonial (East Indies), 1513-1616' (p. 86), is the entry, under date 22 February, that he went to the theatre, " to see a scurvy play set out all by one virgin, which there proved 'a fyemarten' without voice, so that we stayed not the matter." DUNHEVED. A REFERENCE IN SOUTHEY.—In a letter in Southey's ' Life and Correspondence,' iii. 205, the poet says : "The very way in which you admire that passage in 'Kehama' convinces me that it ought not to be there," ifec. A foot-note gives the reference, "' Kehama, canto x. verse 20, commencing— They sin who tell us love can die." But the first line of x. 20 is Then in the dewy evening sky, whereas the stanza to which reference is made by Southey's editor is x. 10, according to the medium 8vo. edition of the 'Poems' published in a single volume by Messrs. Longman. THOMAS BAYNE. AN ERROR IN THE VALE PRESS SHAKE- SPEARE.—In the beautiful edition of Shake- speare's works in the Vale Press, now in course of publication, occurs a peculiar mistake. In Act II. sc. iii. of ' Othello,' after Montano has been wounded by Cassio the proper stage direction is, "Hefaints,"but in the Vale Press edition " He dies " is substituted. MAURICE JONAS. TRENTAL=" MONTH'S MIND." —This word, evidently connected with the French trente (30), is used in Manning and Bray's ' History of Surrey,' where the phrase says some monks were to sing a trental for his soul," i. e., the soul of a benefactor of their establishment. " Month's mind " is the service held, a month after death, for the repose of the deceased's soul. JOHN A. RANDOLPH. MUCK OR PEAT.—With us muck usually stands for dung, or when generally applied for something nasty and filthy. In an American agricultural work, Voorhees's ' Fertilizers,' I find the word muck employed in place of " peat,"for example, in the following sentence : " Where a muck bed exists upon a farm, it should first be studied in reference to its possible drainage." In another para- graph describing the formation of peat the writer says: " The material thus formed is called muck or peat." Another American agricultural writer, L. H. Bailey, in his