356
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. TO. 001.30, 1920.
"HEIGHTEM, TlGHTEM, AND SCRUB" (12 S.
vii. 248, 295). In John Walker's 'Pro- nouncing Dictionary ' one of the meanings given to the verb "to heighten" is "to improve by decoration " ; one of the meanings given to the adjective "tight " is " free from fluttering rags, less than neat "; and one of the meanings given to the noun
- ' scrub " is "anything mean or despicable. "
I quote from the second edition (1797).
JOHN B. WAINEWRJGHT.
As to "hoity-toity," Roget's 'Thesaurus' in notes 715 and 870 on " Defiance and Won- der' ' gives it as an inter j ectioii, with numerous other examples. This may assist Miss ANSTEY towards a solution.
CECIL CLARKE.
Junior Athenasum Club.
The first line of the holly -tree riddle quoted by Sr. SWITHIN at the second reference is given as :
Highly, tightly, paradightly, clothe'l in green, in a little booklet entitled ' Pleasing and Popular Nursery Riddles, Rhymes and Jingles,' p. 29 (Dean & Son, n.cl., but the illustrations, with their boys in frocks and sashes, suggest the early Victorian period). Here the answer is: "A Fir, or Holly Tree," only the former being shown in the illustration.
As to "hoity-toity," I gather that ST. SWITHIN is not aware that the variant " highty-tighty " is, or was, actually used. It occurs (printed " Highty, tighty ! ") on p. 42 of an old American story entitled :
- Marjorie's Quest,' by Jeannie T. Gould
(Ward, Lock & Tyler, London, n.d., but probably dating from the late sixties.)
G. H. WHITE.
23 Weigh ton Road, Anerley.
That entertaining and gossipy volume 'A Book for a Rainy Day,' by J. T. Smith, provides an illustration of this curious phrase. Under date 1818, Smith recounts how Miss Banks, the sister of Sir Joseph Banks, took some interest in a manufactory of wool which her brother was promoting, and she decided to have three riding-habits made of the material being manufactured. They were called, he says, " Hightum, Tightum, and Scrub. The first was her best, the second her second best, and the third her every-day one." The volume is written in a sort of reminiscent form, so the actual date may have been much earlier, since Miss Banks died in 1818. E. E. NEWTON.
Hampstead, Upminster, Essex.
CHAMBERLAIN (12 S. vii. 310). No
portrait of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain
was ever painted by Sir John Millais, though
he did one of Mrs. Chamberlain shortly after
her marriage with that illustrious statesman.
Though it goes beyond the concrete question raised by MR. NORMAN HILLSON it may be of some interest to him and others to state that the leading artists of repute who painted portraits of Mr. Chamberlain, at one time or another, ' are Frank Holl, Sargent, Herkomer, Furse, and Tennyson. Cole.
Holl's portrait was painted for Sir Charles Dilke and bequeathed by him to the Na- tional Portrait Gallery. Sargent's belongs to his widow, now Mrs. Carnegie. Furse 's portrait which Mr. Chamberlain's family regard as one of the best likenesses was unfinished at the time of the artist's death,, and was painted for the Cordwainer's Company. Herkomer's was done for the Constitutional Club and Tennyson Cole's was presented to the Conservative Club at Liverpool. WILLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.
No portrait of Joseph Chamberlain appears in the chronological list of Millais's oil paintings appended to Mr. Spielmann's 'Millais and his Works' (1898).
G. F. R, B.
WILLOW PATTERN CHINA (12 S. vii. 169 ,197, 219, 236). Although of no great importance, it seems a pity to leave this subject without recalling the happy remarks made thereon by Charles Lamb in his essay on ' Old China ' :
"I like [he says] to see my < Id friends whom distance cannot diminish figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics) yet on terra jirmcu still for to we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath
their sandals Here is a young and courtly
Mandarin handing tea to a lady from a salver two miles off. Nee how distance seems to set off respect! And here 1 he same lady, or another for likeness is identity on tea-cups is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! Farther on if far or near can be predicated of their world see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay.
[1] could not help remarking how favourable
circumstances hnd been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort."
J. E. HARTTNG.
