Victorian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Victorian Era’
Welsh journalist Henry Stanley is despatched by head office in New York to find a missing British explorer.
In 1865 explorer David Livingstone went in search of the sources of the Nile. Three years passed with no word of his fate, so Welsh journalist Henry Stanley of the New York Herald was despatched to track him down. By the Autumn of 1871 the errand seemed hopeless, but then word came of a white man in Ujiji, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.
When violinist Joseph Joachim proposed a toast to the world’s greatest composer, he was cut off in mid flow.
German composer Johannes Brahms was well-known for his mercurial attitude to praise. Up to a point he accepted it happily enough, but if ever it became oppressive he would do almost anything to escape it. Charles Villiers Stanford, professor of music at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge University, was present on one of these occasions.
Composer Johannes Brahms disliked the adulation sometimes heaped on him by fans, and found quite imaginative ways to avoid it.
Composer Johannes Brahms liked his music to be appreciated, but if the eulogies became cloying his manner would undergo a marked change. His friend Charles Villiers Stanford tells us about one occasion when Brahms used all his ingenuity to escape a too-flattering fan.
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford recalls the very different receptions given by British and German audiences to a little bit of Brahms.
Britain’s position outside the European Continent, politically and physically, has in no way lessened her appetite for European culture. Indeed at the very height of Empire, so Sir Charles Stanford tells us, a little critical distance gave the British an appreciation (and a common courtesy, one might add) that the Continentals lacked.
Douglas Jardine came up with a plan to deprive the watching public of one of the finest sights in all sport.
The ‘Bodyline’ Test series between Australia and England in 1932-33 remains one of the most controversial moments in cricketing history. It all stemmed from the almost freakish genius of Don Bradman, who to this day remains far and away the best batsman the game has ever seen, but England captain Douglas Jardine was determined to see as little of him as possible.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the demand for hard evidence as a peculiarly English trait.
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) believed that there was no people in Europe so committed to hard, scientific facts than the Victorian English, so unwilling to act until all the evidence is in – a ‘Victorian value’ worth rediscovering today.