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IN DENIS DUVAL'S COUNTRY. 45
when the title became extinct. He is buried in the grounds of St. George the Martyr, Holborn, There, too, lies his wife, who although known as Miss Pappett, was a natural daughter of John James Heidegger, the famous " Count Ugly," who figures alike in the pictures of Hogarth, the verse of Pope, and the prose of Fielding. Heidegger was the partner of Handel in some operatic ventures, and made a large income by theatrical management and masquerades, so loose in character that the Middlesex grand jury presented their projector as " the principal promoter of vice and immorality." Elizabeth Pappett became the wife of Denis on September 2nd, 1750, and died December 30th, 1765. Such was the career of the real personage, whom Thackeray has made the god-father of his imaginary hero.
Denis Duval tells us that he was born at Winchelsea, "where there has been a French church ever since Queen Bess' time and the dreadful day of St. Bartholomew." Here his grandfather was precentor. There was a Huguenot church at Winchelsea in the Armada days, but unlike that at Canterbury, where the French services are still held in the Crypt of the |
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