Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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7

One Delicious Grinding Snip

If little Maggie Tulliver is going to get her hair cut, it’s going to be done on her own terms.

Little Maggie Tulliver’s aunts have called round, and she has been subjected to repeated criticism for her heavy shock of unruly black hair. Even her father has ventured that “it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.” Rebellion rises, and Maggie beckons to her older brother Tom.

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Picture: By William McGregor Paxton (1869–1941), Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.

8

Artful Lizzy Bennet

Elizabeth Bennet stonewalls her way through a disagreeable encounter with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

In Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh has heard that her wealthy nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is planning to propose to Elizabeth Bennet, instead of her own daughter. She has raced to Longbourn, Elizabeth’s home, to demand an explanation of the ‘impossible’, but Lizzy sees no reason to be defensive.

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Picture: By Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), © Sailko, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

9

The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat

In most contests the choices are win, lose or draw, but what happened here remains a mystery.

An Irish tale dating back to 1807 tells of two Cats of Kilkenny, who fought until nothing was left of them but their tails. In ‘The Duel’, a children’s rhyme by American writer Eugene Field, a dog and a cat took things a step further.

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Picture: © MiNe, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

10

How I Met Nastenka

The story-teller recalls his first meeting with Nastenka, and the man who brought them together.

‘White Nights’ (1848) is set in St Petersburg during those enchanted June nights when the sun barely dips below the horizon. It was on such a night that the unnamed narrator of Dostoevsky’s tale caught his first glimpse of the woman he came to know as Nastenka, and he was far too highly strung to resist the spell.

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Picture: © Serge Novikoff, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

11

Columbus

Arthur Clough marvels at the vision of a man who could cross the Atlantic without knowing there was a farther shore.

In August 1492, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) of Genoa set out across the Atlantic in ships provided to him by Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II of Spain, reaching the Bahamas the following October. Europeans of his day had only the unproven theory of a round globe to guide them, and nearly four hundred years later Arthur Clough was still in awe of Columbus’s daring.

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Picture: By Jose Maria Obregon (1832–1902), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.

12

Who’ll Turn the Grindstone?

Whenever Charles Miner suspected an ulterior motive, he would say quietly ‘That man has an axe to grind!’

When someone has a hidden, ulterior motive for what he does, we say ‘he has an axe to grind’. The origin of this saying appears to be an essay in the Luzerne Federalist, a Pennsylvania newspaper, for September 7th, 1810. The author, Charles Miner, edited the paper with his brother Asher; later, Charles became an anti-slavery campaigner and a Congressman.

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Picture: By Just L'Hernault (1832-1922), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.