541
During his tour of England in 1782, Karl Philipp Moritz dropped in on the House of Commons, and thought the histrionics in the Chamber better than any play.
In 1782, German tourist Karl Philipp Moritz visited the Commons chamber, and heard Viscount Feilding rebuke Charles Fox, the Foreign Secretary, for wanting to make war hero Admiral Rodney a Lord: had the Rt Hon. Gentleman not recently declared Rodney’s second-in-command, Admiral Hood, unworthy even of a seat in the Commons? Fox’s despatch-box-thumping reply whetted Moritz’s appetite for more.
Posted September 24 2020
542
In the opening lines of The Cuckoo Clock, Mrs Molesworth paints a word-picture of a house so old that Time itself seemed to have stopped.
The Cuckoo Clock (1877), a children’s story by Mrs Mary Louisa Molesworth (published under the pen-name of Ennis Graham), tells of a little girl named Griselda who is brought to live with her two aunts. There she becomes fascinated by a cuckoo clock upon which the happiness of the timeless old house is said to depend, and which proves to be a very unusual cuckoo clock indeed.
Posted September 23 2020
543
Lord Cromer, a former Consul-General of Egypt, expressed his frustration at politicians who set too much store by Foreign Office briefings.
In an Introduction to Sir Sidney Low’s study of Egypt in Transition (1914), Lord Cromer (1841-1917), former Consul-General of Egypt, humbly recalled how momentous decisions were taken by men who knew next to nothing about the peoples and societies they were dealing with. But more dangerous by far were the decisions taken by men who had been thoroughly briefed by the Foreign Office.
Posted September 20 2020
544
When it opened in 1901, the Uganda Railway still wasn’t in Uganda, and Westminster’s MPs were still debating whether or not to build it.
Two years after Uganda became a British Protectorate in 1894, work began at Mombasa in British East Africa (Kenya from 1920) on a railway inland to Uganda. Thanks to African terrain and British bureaucracy, when Winston Churchill published the following assessment of it in 1908 the meandering line terminated at Kisumu, 660 route-miles away but still short of the Ugandan border.
Posted September 18 2020
545
Almost nine years after Oliver Cromwell’s army drove him from England, King Charles II returned at their invitation, and John Evelyn was there to see it.
On May 29th, 1660, King Charles II rode into London, nine years after his defeat at the Battle of Worcester and exile to the Continent. The King’s return was witnessed by diarist John Evelyn, who had fought for the Royalist cause. He too had endured exile, in France and in Italy, and since his return to London had chafed under Cromwell’s self-righteous nanny state.
Posted September 17 2020
546
On realising that he had the edge on his rivals, music publisher John Brand moved quickly to secure one of Haydn’s peerless Quartets.
A contributor calling himself ‘A Constant Reader’ submitted this story to the Musical World in 1836. He declared that he could vouch for the truth of it, as he had heard it from ‘the originator,’ music publisher John Bland (1750-1840), who was still alive at the time and in a position to refute it. He never did, and the story found its way into Carl Ferdinand Pohl’s influential biography and thence into musical folkore.
Posted September 14 2020