Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 129, April 17, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 129, April 17, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
I believe Mr. Dickens's sketch, in the _Bleak House_, of the woman who
haunts the various Inns of Court, to be a clever combination of
different real characters. It is principally taken from a stout painted
old woman, long since dead, and who I believe was really ruined by some
suit in Chancery, and went mad in consequence, and used to linger about
the Courts, expecting some judgment to be given in her favour. Mr.
Dickens seems to have combined this woman's painful history with the
person and appearance of the diminutive creature mentioned by MR. ALFRED
GATTY. This latter personage is the daughter of a man for many years
bedmaker in one of the Inns of Court (I think Gray's Inn), and much of
her eccentricity is assumed, as, when begging from the few lawyers who
are old enough to remember her father as their bedmaker, no one is more
rational and collected. Though this little woman is well known from her
singular appearance and demeanour, there is no romance about her
history, and her craziness (if it really exists) is not to be attributed
to the Court of Chancery,--at which, as it is in the position of the
dying lion in the fable, every donkey (I mean no disrespect to Mr.
Dickens) must have its fling.
If any correspondent really feels an interest in this little creature's
history, I can undertake, with very little trouble, to supply the
fullest particulars.
B. N. C.
Oxford.
Although I have for many years ceased to be an inhabitant of the
metropolis, I am much gratified at the suggested record of these
worthies, and think it would be a most interesting book, were truthful
particulars got together concerning them, with good portraits--I mean
striking likenesses--of these beings, who, as ALFRED GATTY observes,
"come like shadows, so depart." I will inform him something about the
"half-giant," of whom Charles Lamb says, that he "was brought low during
the riots of London." I almost doubt this, for just about then he lived
in the parish of St. Mary-le-Strand; indeed, before then, my grandfather
was there overseer, or otherwise a parochial authority, and he had him
apprehended and imprisoned as a rogue and a vagabond. I have often heard
my father talk about him; indeed, he knew this man well, and I regret
that I have forgotten his name. He always spoke of him as having been _a
sailor_, and that he had his legs carried away by a cannon-ball. This
burly beggar had two daughters, to each of whom he is said to have given
500_l._ on her wedding; and it was also said he left a handsome sum of
money at his death. But, doubtless, some curious correspondent will be
able to forward the desideratum with farther information. I only tell
the little I know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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