292
NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. OCT. 10, m*.
SIR JOHN GILBERT, J. F. SMITH, AND
'THE LONDON JOURNAL' (11 S. vii. 221, 276,
297, 375 ; viii. 121, 142 ; x. 102, 144, 183,
223, 262). -There is reason to believe that
J. F. Smith was the prototype of the king
of the penny number, the great O. P. Pym,
who appears at the beginning of Sir J. M.
Barrie's ' Tommy and Grizel.'
The Speaker (8 March, 1890) refers to " the glorious days when Mr. J. F. Smith wrote at a salary of 10Z. or 15/. a week " for The London Journal :
" Imagine a florid Bohemian, genial, red- cheeked, with thick curly hair, a loud, happy-go- lucky creature wearing a baggy blue overcoat. He would appear at the offlce in the morning when his salary fell due never before ; would send out for a bottle of port, and call for a boy to bring him writing-paper, blotting-paper, and last week's copy of the journal in which his novel was running. Hastily glancing over it, he satisfied himself as to the exact predicament in which he had last left his lovely heroine, and then unbuttoning his overcoat and choosing one from a pocketful of stubby quill pens, he wrote like a madman for two or three hours .... It was not always so. Publishers sometimes have had to follow him as far as to Jersey, and mount guard over the gifted author until the necessary ' copy ' was extracted."
This article was followed (15 March) by a letter from J. F. McR., who described Smith's small and difficult handwriting, with all the f's looped, all the Vs crossed, and everything except the i's dotted.
" Smith, like Thackeray [proceeds the letter], wrote with the devil ever at his elbow. The imp was one day startled by the sudden and un- precedented cessation of Mr. Smith's pen.... Turning upon him fiercely, Smith demanded, ' Boy ! your name quick ! ' ' George Markham, sir.' Never a word responded Smith, but.... at once resumed his fierce scribbling. The devil trembled lest suspension should follow naming. His mind was set at rest, however, when, in devouring the next instalment of Mr. Smith's novel, he found that his own name George Markham had been given to a new character."
This incident is paralleled in the first chapter of ' Tommy and Grizel,' where Tommy, arriving at Pym's lodgings 22, Little Owlet Street, Marylebone finds the novelist gravelled for lack of matter :
" Pym had a voice that shook his mantelpiece ornaments ; he was all on the same scale as his inkpot. ' Your Christian name, boy ? ' he roared, hopefully, for it was thus he sometimes got the ideas that started him."
Under the erroneous impression that Smith was dead, The Saturday Review, in a notice of ' Minnigrey ' (13 Nov., 1886), remarked :
" Already there is an accretion of legends about his name which promises to develop into a regular myth. Thus it is said that he
maue a
do him
-list. ..{
a hard}
3 say) ol
believed his real strength to lie in serious art ....
Another romance affirms that he was made a
Papal count under circumstances that do hii
the greatest honour as a practical novelist.
What is certain is that J. F. Smith was
working man of letters of the type (let us
Ponson du Terrail ; that, if his English
elaborate and his sentiment a trifle obvious, he
had a prodigious fund of invention ; and that
in his time he amused the toiling millions am
much as anybody who ever worked for them, the
poet of ' Rocambole ' not excepted."
B. L. Stevenson in his essay ' Popular Authors ' does justice to the talent of Smith :
" G. P. B. James was an upper-class author, J. F. Smith a penny-pressman ; the two are in some ways not unlike ; but here is the curiosity James made the better story, Smith was far the more successful with his characters. Each (to bring the parallel home) wrote a novel called ' The Stepmother ' ; each introduced a pair of old maids ; and let any one study the result I James's ' Stepmother ' is a capital tale, but Smith'* old maids are like Trollope at his best."
J. D. HAMILTON.
FIELDING'S ' TOM JONES ' : ITS GEO- GRAPHY (11 S. ix. 507 ; x. 191, 253). At the end of the article at the second reference MR. FREDERICK S. DICKSON asks for an explanation of a passage in the dialogue between Jones and Partridge after leaving Gloucester (bk. viii. chap. ix. ) :
" Nay, to be sure, sir, all the prophecies I have ever read, speak of a great deal of blood to be spilt in the quarrel, and the miller with three thumbs, who is now alive, is to hold the horses of three kings, up to his knees in blood. Lord have mercy upon us all, and send better times I "
This would seem either to be a recollection of an oral tradition or to be taken from some chapbook. Mr. Walter Rye has a good parallel in the Introduction to his ' Tourist's Guide to Norfolk ' :
" Sometimes we hear fragments of Mother Shipton's prophecies. Still harping on the all- engrossing topic of coming battle, they tell how a wondrous Londoner, a miller by trade, with three tluimbs on one hand, is to hold the three kings' horses in the battle which is to be fought on the Backheath Stone Hill, on the Norwich Boad, when the blood is to run so thickly as to clot by the wayside, till ravens carry it away, and when nearly every man shall be killed, and males shall be so rare, that girls, if they see one of the opposite sex, shall run screaming home to their mothers, ' Lawk ! mother ! I have seen a man 1 ' '
Akin to this is the following from a pamphlet of four leaves printed in 1648, and bearing the title ' Foureteene strange Pro- phecies : Besides Mother Shiptons, and Mr. Saltmarsh, predicting wonderful events to betide these yeares of calamity,' &c. :
" Then there will be three Knights in Peter- gate in York, and the one shall not know of the
