Читать книгу Anecdotes about Authors, and Artists - John Timbs - Страница 10

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In the year 1809 was interred, in the churchyard of St. Martin’s-in-the Fields, the body of one Hew Hewson, who died at the age of 85. He was the original of Hugh Strap, in Smollett’s Roderick Random. Upwards of forty years he kept a hair-dresser’s shop in St. Martin’s parish; the walls were hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his customers and acquaintances the several scenes in Roderick Random pertaining to himself, which had their origin, not in Smollett’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The meeting in a barber’s shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the subsequent mistake at the inn, their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friend, are all facts. The barber left behind an annotated copy of Roderick Random, showing how far we are indebted to the genius of the author, and to what extent the incidents are founded in reality.