Character and Conduct

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Character and Conduct’

37
Bad Day at Waterloo Sir Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby

Frederick Ponsonby’s involvement in the Battle of Waterloo began early, and it seemed to him that it went on for ever.

Early in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, the Union Brigade inflicted heavy losses on the French guns and then withdrew, shielded by Colonel William Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons. But then 300 Polish lancers, French allies, rode up. There was a crush. The French fired indiscriminately. In minutes, Ponsonby had lost the use of his arms, his sword and his reins. Then with the flash of a sabre he was down.

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38
Counsel’s Duty to his Client Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

When King George IV tried to divorce Queen Caroline with maximum embarrassment, her barrister warned that two could play at that game.

IN 1820, George, Prince of Wales (who had been Regent for his father since 1811) became King George IV. At once he began divorce proceedings against his estranged wife Caroline, who was living in Italy, and boasted he would expose her private life to public ridicule. Defence counsel Henry Brougham delicately reminded the House of Lords that George had a secret that would rock the monarchy — were it made public.

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39
Vice and Virtue Alexander Pope

Vice is a fact of life, wrote Pope, and God can even bring good out of it; but vice is never a virtue and in tackling vice together we make our society stronger.

In his Essay on Man, Alexander Pope has been reflecting on the part played in society by folly and vice. There is vice and virtue in every man, he says, and human life is like a canvas of blended light and shade: but if vice ought to excite pity and friendship rather than judgment and anger, that should not dupe us into thinking that society can survive if we turn vices into virtues, and virtue into a vice.

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40
An Extraordinary Man Benjamin Robert Haydon

Artist Benjamin Robert Haydon laments the passing of Lord Egremont, whose generosity and good judgment reached far beyond his support for struggling artists.

George Wyndham (1751-1837), 3rd Earl of Egremont, was one of Georgian England’s wealthiest and most philanthropic of men, a patron of the arts and of industry, a responsible farmer and animal breeder. After the Earl died on November 11th, 1837, artist Benjamin Robert Haydon turned to his diary and penned a glowing tribute to a man who had given support to him and many like him in lavish measure.

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41
The Considerate Queen Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III

When the young Aga Khan visited London in 1898 he was presented to Queen Victoria, and found her cultural sensitivity deeply touching.

In February 1898 the Aga Khan, then twenty, left Bombay for Europe. After some days enjoying life on the French Riviera he travelled on to Paris and London, and there in the glorious and bewitching Imperial capital he was presented at Windsor Castle to Queen Victoria herself. It was an intimate affair: only himself, his friend the Duke of Connaught and the Empress, now approaching her eightieth birthday.

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42
A Little Savoir Faire George W. E. Russell

At the Berlin Congress of Powers in 1878, the draft of the Prime Minister’s keynote speech had his anxious aides scuttling about like ants.

On July 13th, 1878, statesmen gathered in Berlin for a Congress of Powers amid high tensions. The Germans had recently invaded France, Russia was demanding Turkey respect the rights of Christians and Turkey was stoking British fears that Russia meant to invade India. Much rested on the tact of Britain’s Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield — which was just what his aides were afraid of.

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