355
When Ambassador Molesworth criticised the government of Christian V, the Danish king cried ‘off with his head!’.
Christian V, King of Denmark and Norway from 1670 to 1699, was a great admirer of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV of France, and sought to emulate the glory of Louis’s court, his ‘divine right of kings’ and his absolute power of government. Over here, though, Parliament had thrown out James II in 1688 for doing the same, and his replacement William III gathered that in England no one was beyond criticism.
Posted August 10 2021
356
Jack Pansay has just bought an engagement ring for the bewitching Kitty Mannering, yet to his annoyance it is the late Mrs Wessington he is thinking about.
Jack Pansay last saw Mrs Agnes Keith-Wessington here in Simla, perched in a rickshaw and weeping her eternal cuckoo cry: “Jack, darling! it’s all a mistake; do let’s be friends”; but for him their shipboard romance had long been over. Now she was dead, and April 1885 found him at Hamilton’s, buying Kitty Mannering an engagement ring, and trying to shake the feeling that someone has been calling his name.
Posted August 7 2021
357
The doorman of a Paris theatre had strict instructions to keep dogs outside, but it was the humans they let in who caused all the trouble.
The following anecdote comes from a pamphlet entitled Popular Sketches of British Quadrupeds, published in 1815. Reflecting the gentler times of Georgian England, the authors looked not only at working animals but also at pets, and treated the reader to a tissue of heartwarming tales of their affection and intelligence.
Posted August 6 2021
358
Richard Cobden told his audience in the London Tavern that however much sabre-rattling was heard in St Petersburg, the average Russian was a man of peace.
In the opinion of Richard Cobden, the Rochdale MP, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia wasn’t a proper Russian. In his fondness for meddling in the affairs of other European countries he resembled the colonially-minded politicians of the West more than his fellow Russians, for whom the thought of being conscripted for military adventures beyond Holy Russia was abhorrent.
Posted August 5 2021
359
It was George-a-Green’s job to stop animals trampling the crops, and it nettled his pride in Wakefield’s broad acres to see some ramblers behaving no better.
Robin Hood, Maid Marian and Robin’s merry men have been tramping carelessly over fields of corn near Wakefield, much to the disgust of George-a-Green, a local pinder (an animal control warden) and the lovely Beatrice beside him. Robin, who for once was armed with no more than a staff like the one George held, said soothingly that for any damage done the amends lay in his own hands.
Posted August 2 2021
360
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Chancellor of the Realm and Imperial Regent of Japan, was inclined to encourage Christianity until he found out why European Powers were so keen on it.
Within fifty years of Fr Francis Xavier’s mission to Japan in 1549, there were a million Japanese Christians. Even Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), Chancellor of the Realm and Imperial Regent of Japan, was intrigued, and he received further missionaries from Portugal and Spain, and even Papal ambassador Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), most courteously — until a bluff ship’s captain let the cat out of the bag.
Posted July 30 2021