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. ix. JUNE 7, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

115

meetings at a little public-house near Victoria Park, an account of which will be found in the Evening News of 26 February, 1901.

The Keep - the - Line Club in the early part of the nineteenth century consisted of wits, artists, actors, authors, gentlemen, and peers. Its object was

"enjoyment and preservation of temper, by putting it to the severest trials. One of the rules was that, whenever a member was insulted by another, how- ever grossly, the insulted person should rise and offer his best thanks to the offender. Another rule imposed a fine of a dozen of claret to the club on the member who published any literary composition of his own. Samuel Rogers, Topham, Miles Peter Andrews, Merry, Morton, Reynolds, Fitzgerald, Horace Smith, Boaden, Kenney, and others, paid the fine willingly whenever it was fairly due. The penalty was once demanded of Wilson (the surgeon) and of John Tufton. The first had issued an advertisement announcing a course of lectures ; Tufton had addressed an electioneering handbill to his constituents. Both publications were pro- nounced to be literary. The authors had not only to pay the penalty in claret, but to profess their unfeigned delight at its being imposed on them." Dr. Doran, * In and About Drury Lane.'

Kentish Club. In 1756

" the Gentlemen of the Kentish Club dine together at the ' St. Alban's Tavern,' according to agreement last year, on 20th January, the 3rd of February, the 2nd of March, and the 6th of April." Whitehall Evening Post, 13 January, 1756.

It was a general custom for county folk to hold their convivial meetings and public feasts the latter once a year at the better- class taverns, and the "St. Alban's" was a famous home of the tavern sodality, and one of those which gave its immediate origin to the modern club. It was situated, not in the thoroughfare now known as Pall Mall, but in St. Alban's Street. This street was wiped out of the map of London to make way for Waterloo Place and Regent Street. The sign of the tavern was doubtless suggested by the name of the street in which it was situated, which in its turn was thus named, not after the proto-martyr, but after Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, who, however, took his title from the town so named in honour of the saint.

The King of Clubs. " Bobus " Smith's King of Clubs, of which Samuel Rogers the banker-poet was a member, met at the " Crown and Anchor Tavern " at the corner of Arundel Street in the Smith was the brother of

Bobus Smith. Life.' The p. 130.

at

Strand. Sydney See further Timbs's * Clubs and Club

King's

Club. - ' Tav. Anec.,' 1825,

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road.

(To be continued.)

STEPMOTHER = MOTHER-IN-LAW. The use of mother-in-law for stepmother has been more than once referred to in * N. & Q.' A flagrant instance of the less usual substitution Qlntep- mother for mother-in-law occurs in Smollett's translation of 'Gil Bias,' book x. ch. ii. Asked the hero of his mother :

" * Will you not on all occasions be absolute mis- tress m my household ? ' ' May be so, and may be not. rejoined she ; ' you have only to fall in love with some flirt of a girl, and then you will marry : then she will be my daughter-in-law, and I shall be her stepmother ; and then we shall live together as stepmothers and daughters-in-law usually do.' "

Smollett's mind, on the evidence of his ren- dering of 4 Gil Bias,' appears to have been thoroughly imbued with Shakespeare phraseo- logy. ST. SWITHIN.

GENDER OF NOUNS IN GERMAN AND RUS- SIAN. It may perhaps be worth while point- ing out briefly that the different methods of expressing the grammatical gender of nouns in German and in Russian find their respective antecedent and model in Greek and in Latin. For just as the Germans use their threefold definite article to denote the gender of every noun not an easy, but an indispensable task to the foreign student who has to learn it by heart so did and still do the Greeks, whilst, on the other hand, the Russians in strange accordance, not with Greek, but with Latin lack the definite article, but express the different gender of nouns by means of their different termina- tions. In this respect, we may assert, the ac- quisition of Russian presents a minor obstacle to the classical scholar than does that of German. H. KREBS.

Oxford.

EVOLUTION OF A NOSE. Lord Ronald Leveson-Gower, in his gossipy volume of 'Old Diaries,' recently publisned, speaking of a visit he paid on one occasion to Mr. Finch, of Barley-on-the-Hill (a grandson of the sixth Duchess of Beaufort), remarks of his host, "He has the Somerset nose," in allusion, of course, to what has been in modern times a very prominent distinguishing fea- ture of the ducal house in question.

But it is curious that Lord Ronald should be apparently in ignorance that the well- known Beaufort nose is in reality a Leveson- Gower nose, having been brought into the Somerset family by the very Duchess of Beau- fort above referred to, who was a daughter of the first Marquis of Stafford (Lord Ronald's great-grandfather). The Sutherlands, oddly enough, have lost the famous nose, at least in the present generation ; but it survives con-