Note 468 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

Hugh Hewson died in 1809, and it appears from a newspaper of that year, quoted by Robert Chambers (Favourite Authors: Smollett), that he was proud of being the prototype of Strap. “His shop was hung round with Latin quotations, and he would frequently point out to his acquaintance the several scenes in Roderick Random pertaining to himself, which had their foundation, not in the Doctor’s inventive fancy, but in truth and reality. The Doctor’s meeting him at a barber’s shop at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the subsequent mistake at the inn; their arrival together in London, and the assistance they experienced from Strap’s friend, were all of that description.”

But there are four Straps in the field. Faulkner, in his Chelsea, finds the “real” Strap in one William Lewis, a book-binder, who died in 1785. Smollett, he says, induced Lewis to set up business in Chelsea, and procured him customers. “I resided seven years in the same house with his widow, and had frequent opportunities of hearing a confirmation of the anecdotes of her husband, as related by the celebrated novelist.”

Another claimant was one Duncan Niven, a Glasgow wig-maker, referred to in the Gentleman’s Magazine as “the person, it is said, from whom Dr. Smollett took his character of Strap in Roderick Random.”

Lastly, one Hutchinson, a Dunbar barber, had some pretensions to be Strap.