Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/343

 9* s. VL OCT. 13, im] NOTES ,AND QUERIES. 281 LUNDON, SATVRDAr, OCTOBER 13. 1900. CONTENTS.-No. 146. NOTKS:—Miss Trefuiis, 281—Shakespeare's Books, 283— A Swim for Life—Political Colours—Ely Place, Holborn, 284 — Hunter Street, Brunswick Square — ' Counsellor MnnnenT—"Troy" Weight, "Iron, 285—" L'Atglon"— Historic Parallel—Sleeping in Church—Slang for Gin— Qad'B Hill—Pitched Battle, 286—"Solecize'p—Sadl and Goethe, 287. QUERIES :-King and Painter — Rev. Charles Mason — Regents of Scotland—George Eliot—India Office Records, 287—Quotation from Carlyle —Fl»x Spinning and Pro- tection—Roads in England—Ancient and Modern Names of Cities—" Doing the dancers "—Losses in the American Civil War—Blphmstone, 288—London Bridge-Bishop of Norwich's Inn—Margaret of Bourbon—Bishop of Kilsanor —Hereditary Apparition—" Whim-beam "—Prologue and Epilogue to 'The Critic'—Stewarts of Annat—Ramsey Abbey, 289—Peyto or Feto Family—Multatuli, 290. RBPLIBS :—"Goal" and " Gaol "—Dick Kltcat, 290-" Old England"—Old Masonic Engraving — Shakespeare and the Sea—" Cheval de St. Jean "—" Seek " or " Seeke "— "Tashlicb," 291—Lines on Swift—Poem attributed to Milton — Stuart Family — Early Mention of Rifling — Junl us, 292 — Quotation—Anglo-Israel — Shrewsbury Re- cords, 293 — Holywell in Hunts — Plantagenet Chair — " A mache and a horseshoe," Ac.—Suppression of the PrayerBook, 294—Trental-Lauderdaleon India—" Data " as Singular, 298—Eleanor Cross, Waltham —' Crown of Wild Olive —" Temperance," 296—' The Welsh People '—Gates of Sandwich—Huiih, 297—Wire Pond—"Creak," 298. NOTES ON BOOKS i-Fishwick's ' History of Preston '— ' Library Journal'—' IntenneVliaire '—Reviews and Maga- zines—Obituaries. Notices to Correspondent*. MISS TREFUSIS. IN one of those charming poems of society in which Mr. Austin Dobson unites to the urbanity and ease of Prior a sincerity of feeling essentially his own, the praises of a certain Molly Trefusis are celebrated in a strain which, to use the expression of the worthy Mr. Mist, was familiar to the " wits in town in the days of the early Georges. Mr. Dobson's verses are founded on a stanza which is quoted in the late Lord Neaves's little book on 'The Greek Anthology' in "Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Headers," and which is said to have formed part of a poem published in an " old maga- zine."* The lines run as follows:— Now the Graces are four and the Venoses two, And ten ia the number of Muses; For a Muse and a Grace and a Venus are you,— My dear little Molly Trefusis ! But Mr. Dobson differs from the poet, and, while allowing the lady's claim to rank among the Graces, emphatically disputes the assertion that she was either a Muse or a Venus. It was, he thinks, the dimpled hand able to identify this magazine. maiden of Zeus that the poet had in his mind when his glance first fell upon the sunny- yed English girl who found ner fate at Bath n the shape or " a knight of the shire and a mnting J.P.," and who from Mr. Dobson's loquent silence we may infer had no more omantic career before her than that of a village Lady Bountiful. Mr. Dobson ques- ions in a note whether his heroine is to be dentified with a certain "Miss Trefusis" whose ' Poems' are sometimes to be found in /he second-hand booksellers' catalogues. To >his inquiry the accurate biographer, if such . being exists, must reply distinctly in the negative; for while the two ladies had several mints in common, such as a liking for " the
 * Perhaps one of the readers of ' N. 4 Q.' may be
 * ity of Bladud," and an affinity with the

tfuses, who, in the case of one at least, were ar from being of the " dry and acid " order, I n •! r fates were distant as the poles from one another. One, as we have seen, led the quiet and uneventful life of a country matron ; the other, tossed about in a vortex of passion and despair, passed through an existence which was the misery of herself and her iriends, and died in a state of indigence almost before she had crossed the threshold of middle age. Elizabeth Trefusis was born in 1763. Like Mr. Dobson's heroine, she came of ancient Cornish parentage, being the daughter of Mr. Robert Cotton Trefusis, and the sister of the successful claimant to the barony of Clinton, a dignity which is still held by hia descendant. She grew up to maturity in an age of general upheaval, when new ideas were in the air, some of which are the com- monplaces of the present day, while others will never be submitted to the test of realiza- tion. It was the age of Mary Wollstonecraf t. of Helen Maria Williams, of Mary Hayes, ana other clever and emotional women who took the lead in a movement for what they called " the emancipation " of their sex. The private lives of these ladies were generally marked by a freedom and eccentricity which, to a distant observer, seems like a faint caricature of the excesses of Wilkes, Fox, and a few other masculine leaders of contemporary liberal thought. In a very different orbit revolved the mind of the lady who was affectionately known to her friends as Ella Trefusis. Her character has been drawn for us by one who was early brought into contact with her, and whose delineations bear the impress of truth. The Rev. William Beloe, to whose gossiping pages the student ot literature is under many obligations, has in three chapters sketched for us a little masterpiece of portraiture, the excellence of