Cardiff, Aug. 5. 1851.]
A friend has copied and sent to me a passage in the paper named "NOTES AND QUERIES," of Saturday, July 19. 1851, No. 90. page 44.
The passage refers to my sister, Lady Flora Hastings, and a poem ascribed to her. If it were a matter solely of literary nature, I should not have interfered; considering the point in debate may not be interesting to a very extended circle of persons. But I feel it is a duty not to allow an undeserved imputation to rest on any one, especially on one styled a "Christian lady." Probably no person but myself can place the debated question beyond doubt. I do not know who the "Christian lady" or who ERZA may be; but the lines entitled "Lady Flora Hastings' Bequest" are not by Lady Flora Hastings. She solemnly bequeathed all her papers and manuscripts to me, and those verses are not amongst them; else they should have been included in the volume of her poems which I published. Moreover, Lady Flora Hastings never parted with her Bible till, by my brother's desire, I had warned her on the authority of the physicians that any hour might close her existence on earth. She was then unable to read it to herself. It was to me (not to my brother, as stated by CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH) that she confided the book and the message for our mother; and when she did so, she was too weak in body to have committed the simple words of the message to paper. I was with her night and day for many days before she gave the gift and message to my care, and she died in my arms. She could not have composed any verses, or written a word, or dictated a sentence, without my knowledge, for more than a week before she died.
S. F. C. BUTE AND DUMFRIES.
Largo House, Fife, July 30. 1851.
Replies to Minor Queries.
Inscription on an old Board (Vol. iii., p. 240.).
—I would suggest that the 31st chapter of Genesis may solve this riddle. We have in the latter part of that chapter the account of a covenant entered into between Jacob and Laban, and we are there told that a pillar was erected as a witness between them of this covenant; Jacob calling it Galeed, also Mizpah. May not the inscription on the board be a token of some covenant of the same kind; and may it not have been placed on a pillar, or on some conspicuous place on the exterior of the house, or over the mantel in some room of the house (this latter being suggested in the article describing the board)? If I am correct, the name of the person who did "indite" the inscription should be one which, if not spelt exactly like Galeed or Mizpah, would in sound resemble the one or the other.
H. H. B.
Monte Cavallo, South Carolina.