Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/135

 9* s. viii. AUG. 10, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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great age. His son, ]6douard Fetis, however, at once took up the matter again. He de- clared that he was in possession of Orison s's oratorio, and could prove the case. There- upon Araedee Kouget de 1'Isle forthwith withdrew from the lawsuit.

M. Albert Legranrl, president of the Com- mission of the Archives at Saint-Omer, con- firmed the statement in question in these words : "J'en ai la preuve authentique dans les mains."

It will be seen from this that the assertion made in the Gartenlaube of 1861 by the organist Hamma, as to the Meersburg oratorio he said he had discovered in the musical library of the Town's Church there a state- ment which was many years afterwards dis- puted by Chouquet by no means covers the whole case. New inquiries, however, are now being made in Meersburg. The personal recollection of the distinguished historian Johannes Scherr as to a Christmas cantata composed by his own. father, an organist in Swabia, from an old German mass which latter may possibly have been the basis of the oratorio of Saint-Omer, as suggested by the French musical writer Castil - Blaze remains fully standing as before. That refurbished old German mass in Swabia was recognized by a soldier who had fought in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars as being in the main the tune of the ' Mar- seillaise.'

Chouquet's article in Sir G. Grove's 'Dic- tionary ' is in no wise decisive. Six years after it the French writer Arthur Loth pub- lished "Le Chant de la Marseillaise: son Veritable Auteur, avec Facsimile du Manu- scrit" (Paris, 1886). In that work the oratorio of Saint-Omer is reproduced, and clear evidence given. It may not be amiss to mention that the first Strasburg edition of the * Battle Song of the Rhine Army,' as it was originally called the music of which is " a mere skeleton," as Loquin says, of what we now know to be the * Marseillaise ' does not bear Rouget's name, " just as if he had not been sure himself of being the author of his music," to quote M. Arthur Loth. ^ No one who has not gone through all this literature, as I have done, can give a com- petent opinion on this complicated subject, and certainly cannot speak of "a character for honesty to lose." Being personally- as I said in the Daily Newssm admirer of the grand strains of a revolutionary hymn which [ have often joined in singing, even though it be originally a war-song against Germany, I dealt with the matter simply from the point of view of historical truth,

As to the political character of Rouget, it was, unfortunately, a very shifty one : first revolutionist ; then reactionary ; then a flatterer of Bonaparte ; then of the Bourbons. So it is stated by Gaudot from * Memoires sur Carnot.' KARL BLIND.

P.S. My first inquiry at Meersburg has just brought me the following statement from an authoritative source :

"Mr. Schreiber, the organist of many years' standing, declares to me that such a mass [as Mr. Hamma said had been composed by Holtzmann, and found by him] may at one time have been there, but that it was possibly ptit out of the library with com- positions which are in a defective state and no longer used."

This letter, which I have before me, is written by the musical professor of the Seminary at Meersburg, enclosed in a letter from a high administrative official, who instituted the inquiry for me. I am, however, continuing the investigation still further.

KNIFEBOARD OF AN OMNIBUS (9 th S. vii. 487; viii. 23). I have to-day seen two specimens of omnibuses actually on the road thirty- three years ago, and still running in a private capacity. They are the exact type of the omnibus of my memory of forty-five years since. Two passengers sat alongside the driver and five on a seat behind access by box of wheel, leather strap, and iron step. Under the driver's seat was a large "boot."

The roof was sharply curved, so that the back-to-back knifeboard seats rested on three or four shaped cleats. Apropos, Harper's ' Bath Coach Road ' shows an engraving, of date 1837, wherein gentlemen are depicted sitting simply on this curved roof. Access to the roof was only on the off-side by two iron steps and a guide iron ; to get to or from the near-side knifeboard you had to put your leg across the low back. The " cad " stood on a round perch on the near side, where he clung by a leather strap, and whence he was able to reach the handle of the omnibus door. The curved roof allowed, by a projection, a through ventilation the whole length of the inside, which the present flat roofs deny. Without the slightest doubt " knifeboard " applied to the seat.

H. P. L.

This subject having been already so ably discussed in the columns of 'N. & Q.,' it may appear superfluous, if not impertinent, to add anything further ; but even small items regarding " vanishing London " may prove of some interest if not to present readers of the paper, yet perhaps to future genera- tions. One piece of evidence, seemingly