Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/200

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

194


NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s. iv. JULY,


Brown[?] of New England. Sir Charles died 8. p. Jan. 11, 1768. His brother, Admiral Sir Thomas Frankland, of whom there is a notice in the ' D.N.B.,' married in May,

1743, Sarah, daughter of Rhett, son of

the Chief Justice of South Carolina. Sir Thomas, who died Nov. 21, 1784, had three sons, besides one who died an infant, and seven daughters. The direct male line from Sir John Russell and Frances Crom- well is said in this pedigree to have become extinct at the death of Sir George Russell, born in 1781. EDWARD BENSLY.

See C. R. Wilson's ' Early Annals of the English in Bengal,' vol. ii. pt. i. p. 328, for pedigree of the descendants of Lady Frances Russell. See also the same volume for details regarding her son John, second Governor of Fort William, Bengal.

L. M. ANSTEY.

GENERAL GRANT ON WELLINGTON (12 S- iv. 44, 115). Probably the following anec- dotes give the origin of the story quoted by MR. C. E. STRATTON in his query.

The late Sir William Fraser in his ' Words on Wellington,' 1889, p. 79, wrote :

" A story was told of General Grant, the great American President and warrior, which fascinated me. General Grant was invited "to dine at Apsley House by the 2nd Duke of Wellington. A most distinguished party assembled to meet him. During a pause, in the middle of dinner, the ex- President, addressing the Duke at the head of the table, said, ' My Lord, I have heard that your father was a military man. Was that the case ? ' '

Instead of omitting this absurd story from his completed book, Fraser contented him- self with writing, nearly one hundred pages later (viz., pp. 170, 171), as follows :

" In an earlier part of this work I told the story of President Grant dining at Apsley House. I regret that I asked the 2nd Duke what really took place. However, as the reader has had ful enjoyment of the story, I must now, in the interests of truth, state what the Duke told me happened. He said that during dinner Genera Grant kept trying to get him to say what was the greatest number of men that his father hac commanded in the field. The Duke added, ' I saw what he was at ; if I had said forty or fifty thousand men, he would have replied, " Well, ] have commanded a hundred thousand " ; so ] was determined not to answer his questions as to this ; and I succeeded.' "

This appears to be the original of the late Lord Redesdale's story. Indeed it is not impossible that Fraser, who apparently found his first story too fasci nating for omission, " improved " his seconc as time went on ; or others probably did so Fraser died in 1898.


The Duke's answer to General Grant Bright well have been " I do not remember," 3 eeing that his father commanded 69,700 men in the field at Waterloo. See ' The rlise of Wellington,' by the late Lord Roberts, in The Pall Mall Magazine of Fanuary, 1895, or vol. v., p. 82. If it be hat the Redesdale story has its origin in ,he second Fraser story, it is obvious that t rests on an assumption made by the second duke as to what Grant would have said in circumstances which did not occur. [f the ex-President had desired to do so. le could easily have made the suggested emark without the opportunity supposed to have been sotight for, but it is hardly conceivable that he would have done so.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

A. R. BURT, MINIATURE PAINTER (12 S. iv. 47, 115). Information about him was asked for in 1880 by R. O. in ' The Cheshire Sheaf,' Series I. vol. ii. R. O. stated that Burt lived in Crane Street, Chester, some 55 years ago, was well known as a drawing master, and as such visited Parkgate weekly in one of the old-fashioned hobby-horses then in vogue, the wheels being specially made for him of wooden barrel-hoops for lightness. He painted cabinet portraits in oil in addition to his more popular series of local celebrities in water colours, and made some very good copies of heads from old masters, including copies in oil after Teniers. Mr. Joseph Mayer, F.S.A., wrote to say he had a portrait of Richard Robert Jones etched or engraved by Burt for a memoir of Jones by William Roscoe. Mr. Monk Gibbon stated he had eight miniatures by Burt, the earliest signed " Burt, 1815." Five of them were in black papier-mache frames, the rings for suspension fastened by ornamental gilt clasps, lettered "A. R. Burt, Miniature Painter." Burt, he said, lived for some weeks each summer at Parkgate, and indicated his house, in front of which the word " Nelson " appeared in the pavement in small white stone, done by Burt. G. T. stated that Burt came to Chester from Bath in 1812, and opened a studio and exhibition room in Northgate Street. A circular gave " the cost at which these really artistic portraits, which have made many of our Chester celebrities of the last two generations so familiar to our eyes, were supplied by Mr. Burt." The adver- tisement said :

" Mr. Burt, from the facility that extensive practice has given to his pencil, can take the LIKENESS in half-an-hour, and afford the COLOURED PROFILES, at Ten Shillings and Sixpence each."