Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/454

372 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.vm.MA Y 7,i92i. With the movement for the extension of it became a matter of conversation that our old the franchise. friend Leander had again become popular, not Shortly after the French Revolution of ?? * f^^J^ a * a SS^f ? f ******** -irno r^ -i 11 i -j i- tnat ne naa stood a contested election and m 1848 Cochrane called, on his own initiative, the name of had been triumphantly re- a meeting in Trafalgar Square for March turned as a member of the British House of 6, 1848, to protest against the income-tax. Commons. He was Warned by the authorities that the Now it is true that .Charles Cochrane meeting Would be suppressed and did not stood as a Liberal candidate for. West- appear. A large crowd of Chartists and minster in 1847, and Was very nearly suc- others assembled, and G. W. M Reynolds, cessful, and it may Well have been that the novelist, mounting a wall, delivered a writing many years afterwards this had violent speech which made him the popular been exaggerated into his actual return hero of the hour, introduced him to the i as M.P. I suggest, therefore, that he was Chartist movement, and led to the establish- the hero of this serio-comic adventure on ment of Reynolds' s Newspaper. Trafalgar ! Richmond Hill Terrace. Square Was cleared by the police by force, j From, the fact that he died in Nelson and many arrests Were made. i Square, Blackfriars Road, Which even in There is contained in a local publication 1855 was an unfashionable neighbourhood, called ' Richmond Notes,' published in I assume that the wealthy widow's money December, 1885, another account of a had mainly vanished. R. S. PENGELLY. mysterious minstrel Which I expect also 12, Poynders Road, Clapham Park. refers to one of Charles Cochrane's appear- i ances. The date is given as 1833, but that may be a mistake, for "Juan de Vega's"! MONTE CRISTO (12 S. viii. 229). As book Was published in 1830 and his tour this question is constantly coming up, and was made in 1828-9. This Richmond as it was settled by Dumas himself in the narrative tells of one " Leander " or " The preface to one of his less well-known books, Wandering Minstrel," who appeared in a ! ' The Company of Jehu,' I think it would troubadour's garb with a guitar every | be worth While to print what he says on the evening on Richmond Hill Terrace. It subject. After some remarks on his care- was Whispered that he Was a great nobleman fulness as to facts he goes on to say : in disguise exercising his talents to Win a ; That gives such a character of truth to what I %vager, and he Would never receive any write that the personages I plant in certain humbler offering than silver coins from his P^ces seem to grow there; and some people Jaye Audiences. His entertainments became so ^^^^^^^S^^ popular With the upper and middle classes them. With regard to* this, "i shall tell you a of Richmond and the neighbourhood that little thing in confidence, my dear readers, tne Watermen at the foot of the hill found onl y don ' t repeat it. I do not wish to injure no demand for their boats. They accordingly Cry; % j ,-, . . I 7 , P OUt It VOU gO tO Jj.o,ii3ciiico mev win BIIUVV yuu arranged with a Workman in the employ of Morel's house on the Cours, Mercedes' house tradesman in the town, Who, dressed in at the Catalans, and the dungeons of Dantes an. exact copy of the " Wandering Min- | and Faria at the Chateau d'If. strel's" attire, every evening sang vulgar T When I brought out 'Monte Cristo' at the songs and absurd parodies to the accom- dpa ^g oflh^ChlleL d^wWclfthe^t* me? pamment of a guitar quite close to the I wanted it for the scene-painter. The artist to original " Minstrel." This burlesque at- whom I had written not only sent me the sketch, tracted large numbers of the " lower classes," but he did more than I had ventured to ask of Whose noise completely ruined the more Sjj he wrote underneath it :/' View of the refined entertainment of " Leander." One gS2 u d If n the Slde from whlch Dautes was evening there Was a regular scuffle between ; I have heard since that a worthy fellow, a guide the partisans of the two " Leanders," in ! attached to the Chateau d'If, sells pens of fish- Which a Richmond belle struck the spurious ! }> one . s made by the Abbe Faria himself. Un- one -with TIPT* -naracjnl TV>o vi'^f "r>if^ f^ I iuckily, Dantes and the Abbe Faria never existed r parasol. Ine riot Wn ich tol- e t in imagination ; consequently, Dantes owed ended the appearances of the" Wan- could not have been flung from the top to the clermg Minstrel " ; the Watermen had Won. bottom of the Chateau d'If, neither could the There is no evidence so far that this was b *J vStYoIaliSes 1 . 6 ^ But ^ iS ^ Charles Cochrane, but the narrator concludes ! AVERX PARDOE. by saying that years afterwards Toronto, Ont.