Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/539

12 S. x * -*K 10, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 441 LONDON, JUNE 10. 1922. CONTENTS. No. 217. NOTES: Marat in England, 441 Gucr.'negon of Ancaster, 443 Simson Family, 445 Bedford Inscriptions, 447 Julian Bower Literary Parallels and Coincidences, 449 Spanish Proverb, 450. QUERIES : Jane Austen: References wanted The Capon Tree in Jedwater, 450 Wypers " Stone-coat " Heraldic Rochester Charters : " Waveson "Major William Murray London Commercial Schools in the Eighteenth Century- Colonel Richard Elton, 451 " St. Fraunces Fire "The Adventures of a Coin Pedigree of Catherine Plaistow, Dublin" No less " and " > o fewer " Tupper's Poems on " Chinese " Gordon The Boss of Billingsgate, 452 The Brit- ish and Foreign Review James Bordieu Washington Wed- ding-ring : Change of Hand Grazia Deledda Grantee of Arms wanted Byerley Author wanted Reference wanted, 453. REPLIES : " Hay" Silver," 454 Yorkshire Use of " Thou " Abbot Paslew : his Place of Execution Mules on Moun- tains. 456 Adah Isaacs Menken's ' Infelicia,' 457 D'Anvers Arms Inn : Pindar's Bagnio" Monkey Trick "Rhymed History of England Early Victor an Literature, 458 Brass Ornaments on Harness The Royal Anns The Dance of Salome, 459 Authors wanted, 460. NOTES ON BOOKS : ' British Flags.' Notices to Correspondents. JJote*. MARAT IN ENGLAND. (See ante, pp. 381,- 403, 422.) THE second phase opens to find him installed on the medical staff of the Comte d' Artois in Paris, one of those " Princes " whom he had attacked so fiercely in his ' Chains of Slavery.' It is interesting to learn, precisely, how this appointment was obtained. " There can be no doubt," Mr. Morse Stephens assures us, " that he had at this time the reputation of an accomplished physician, for in 1777 he was summoned to Paris to take up a situation at Court " (Pall Mall Magazine, Sept., 1896 ; Bax, 1891, p. 35). There is, however, as we have slum 11, no evidence whatever of such a repu- tation, nor is there of any " summons to Court." Jean Paul, himself, is quite candid on the point. He owed the situation, he admits, to the influence of the Marquise de 1'Aubespine, a patient, it should be explained, whose seduction he had accomplished in defiance of all professional ethics (Cabanes, pp. 114-15). Further, he studiously con- cealed from the Comte his lack of profes- sional qualifications, and even contrived to get his entirely apocryphal " plusieurs facultes d'Angleterre " officially recorded in the brevet, the original of which still exists (ibid., pp. 104-5). This appointment, which was as one of the doctors on the medical staff of the Comte, was apparently neither a very important nor very lucrative affair ; but the fact that he was eager to procure it shows that the exchange was probably made from something a good deal less substantial. His stipend was 2,000 livres, or about 80, a year, and he was merely one of a medical staff of twelve ; but he was not debarred from private practice and was entitled to certain allowances, among which, it is said, was an official residence " Aux Ecuries." Mr. Morse Stephens explains that this was an address, equivalent to our Stableyard, St. James's Palace, and did not import, as Carlyle and others have supposed, that his duties were connected with the Comte' s horses, grooms or stables. But it was more probably an office only, for Marat never re- sided there. We know, moreover, that he had some practice as a veterinary at New- castle, and that, although he was originally appointed, and signed himself , as "medecin des gardes du corps," one letter at least exists in which he describes himself specifi- cally as " medecin des ecuries du Comte d' Artois" (Vellay, 281). This would point to his subsequent transfer to the latter department and so would reconcile both views. Duval, in his * Souvenirs de la Terreur,' describes Marat as doctor to the Comte' s grooms ; Montjoie calls him doctor to the Comte 's stables ; and Monseigneur de Salamon, in his ' Memoirs,' corroborates them in a curious way. He tells us that he once consulted Marat, who at that time was medecin des ecuries du Comte d 1 Artois, but that on taking his prescription to a well-known chemist, the latter exclaimed, " This medicine is not for you it is a horse -mixture ! " Having, then, succeeded in hoodwinking his patron in the matter of his medical credentials, Jean Paul aspires, later, to hood- wink the public with regard to his social status. Thus we find him submitting to the Heralds in Paris, " proofs " of his noble descent, and inditing the following : Have you received my letter ? If so, I hope you will not refuse my armorial bearings, seeing ixnv assure.! is 1 lie nobility of my family both in