[80] There lies on my desk, as I write, a copper token, which I lately picked up in a shabby shop of Red Lion Passage, High Holborn. It is about the size of a penny piece, and on it is stamped “Ranelagh House, 1745:” these raised letters as clearly cut as on the day when coined. It pleases me to wonder which and how many of the men I mention above may have handed in this piece at the entrance gate.
[91] Henri, Marquis of Ruvigny, fled from France on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, came to England, was here naturalized, and received the title of Count of Galloway.
[109] In the embankment garden, just in front, has lately been placed a memorial to the poet and painter: his bust in bronze modelled by Ford Madox Brown, the painter, surmounting a graceful drinking fountain designed by John P. Seddon, the architect; both life-long friends of Rossetti.
[125] This house was kept, in 1790, by a Mrs. Mary Jacob, a New England woman, and I have seen a letter from her to her brother in America, in which she says, in her old-fashioned spelling: “I keap a Coffe Hous, which I can Scarcely macke a bit of Bred for myself, but it Ennabels me to keep a home for my Sons.” This letter is prized as a relic by the family, none of whom have any notion of how “Polly Cummings”—her maiden name in New England—found her way to Chelsea and to Don Saltero’s!
[160] I quote this sentence from a letter sent to me by the Reverend R. H. Davies, Incumbent of the Old Church, Chelsea, to whom I am indebted for courtesies in this connection: “To my mind, there is no doubt that his grave is somewhere in the open part of the churchyard; but, as the grave-stone has disappeared, it would be too great a work to excavate the whole with the hope of finding the coffin-plate.”