Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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307

Kelly’s Hero

While on tour in Austria, Irish tenor Michael Kelly was introduced to Mozart, and discovered a man of many talents and much kindness.

In 1783, young Irish tenor Michael Kelly embarked upon a tour of Austria. One of his early engagements was a piano recital and supper-party also attended by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, now twenty-seven, and the two became friendly. Mozart spoke touchingly of his English friend Thomas Linley, a gifted violist who had drowned in a boating accident some five years earlier, aged just twenty-two.

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Picture: By an anonymous artist, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

308

Not Ready for Power

Man had proved spiritually unprepared for the discovery of coal, said Robert Bruère, and was poised to squander the next energy revolution too.

In 1922, Robert W. Bruère gave thanks for the enormous social and economic benefits brought by the Coal Age. Yet the benefits could have been far greater. Despite so much plenty, mankind went on living as if life were still a desperate scramble for survival in which might is right and the weakest go to the wall. When we finally realise our dream of solar energy, will we be any better prepared?

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Picture: © Paul Sidwell, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

309

The Crudest of Mistakes

Sir Bernard Pares warned that after the Great War, Western powers must not assume Germany’s role as supercilious bully.

In 1916, Sir Bernard Pares looked ahead cautiously to the end of the Great War, and to the prospect of an end to Germany’s high-handed economic domination over Russia. Knowing the Russian Emperor Nicholas’s goodwill towards England, Pares urged Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s government to set an example of restraint, liberty and understanding, and not simply to take the German Empire’s ignoble place.

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Picture: © Ernst Sandau (1880–1918), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

310

A False Economy

Thomas Telford told the parish council of St Chad’s Church in Shrewsbury that their leaky roof was the last thing they should worry about.

In July 1788, rising surveyor Thomas Telford was living in Shrewsbury Castle as a guest of the local MP, Sir William Pulteney, who had acquired the historic fortress through his wife Frances and wanted Telford to make it habitable. News of his residence nearby reached the parish council of St Chad’s Church, who thought he might be just the man to mend their leaky roof.

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Picture: © Richard Symonds, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

311

French Leave

A French poodle won the heart of a fastidious English officer by covering him in mud.

The cat, wrote Nora Alleyne, has been the heroine of many extraordinary tales of homing instinct, yet other animals deserve a mention, such as the flock of sheep that repatriated themselves from Yorkshire to their breeding-ground north of the Cheviots. There are numerous stories of dogs, too, finding a way home in the face of overwhelming obstacles.

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Picture: © Yellowst0ner, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

312

The Serum Run

Twenty teams of dogs ran a life-or-death race against time over Alaska’s frozen trails to bring medicines to desperately sick children.

In the icy winter of 1924-25, the town of Nome in Alaska was completely cut off by road, rail, air and sea. When Curtis Welch, Nome’s only doctor, diagnosed diphtheria among the town’s children in mid-January, the race was on to bring thousands of doses of antitoxin from the nearest railway station, 674 miles away over the old Iditarod Trail. American women were among those agog for the latest updates.

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Picture: © Markus Trienke, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.