First to Wear a Gainsborough

First to Wear a Gainsborough

1901

The great wheel shaped hat with plumes that during the travels of the celebrated picture which has just been recovered has been generally known as a Gainsborough or a Duchess of Devonshire was never associated in the last century either with the artist or the duchess. It was invented by Mlle. Bertin, the celebrated mantua maker to Marie Antoinette. The queen did not think it became her, but it took the fancy of the pretty and unfortunate Princess de Lamballe, who made the hat popular, and it was known in London and Paris as the Lamballe.

In The Ladies' Magazine for 1785 there is a description of this hat, in which the author described it as "wide brimmed and made of black velvet, surmounted with bunches of ostrich feathers. It is much patronized by the Princess de Lamballe, the Duchess de Polignao and Mme. de Vigier Lebrun." Mme. Lebrun is represented as wearing one of these hats in one of her most popular portraits. — Pall Mall Gazette.

Color-Film Lotion Is Found

1919

Russian Invents Emulsion Designed to Improve Photography.

LONDON, England. — A secret emulsion, invented by a Russian, which, it is asserted, will make color photography possible for everybody, is about to be introduced into this country. The problem of making the process capable of snapshot as well as time work is claimed to have been overcome and the exposure can be as rapid as with the ordinary emulsion, thus fitting the invention for moving picture work also.

Special cameras and plates will be on the market shortly and the cost of a colored film is expected to he only 15 to 20 per cent higher than the ordinary black and white type.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 9.

An Experiment In Journalism

1901

Once there was a really radical paper, in London it was, but the man who made it now lives here and tells the tale. It was one of those papers which are a tragedy. They represent the wreck of the enthusiasm of strong men who must find the outlet for their apostolate. This paper began by being at odds with all that was established, and it had readers. But as time went on the man who made the paper drove off singly and in groups all those who had begun by being his supporters. It was found a little too radical for them, and they no longer kept step with its newest march.

"Of course I now can see that such a paper was foredoomed to failure," the editor said after he had recited the early history of his venture. "I confess it was pretty strong even for British radicals. After the circulation had dwindled down to the extremists I succeeded in alienating about half of them by denouncing social democracy as feudal oppression, and the other half left me when I attacked atheism on the score of its superstitious tendencies. After that I ran the paper as long as I could without any subscribers. But I had to give it up. Nobody would read it except myself, and toward the end I had to give up reading it myself. I found it too unsettling. So it stopped." — New York Commercial Advertiser.

London's Donkey Famine of 1898

1901

The donkey famine in 1898 was one of the strangest scarcities that ever befell Britain. One cannot eat donkeys, but the dearth of them caused a terrible lot of inconvenience and sent the price of Neddy up to a prohibitive sum.

There was an epidemic of disease among the donkeys of the towns, especially those animals belonging to poor people. This so thinned out the donkey roll call that these useful beasts became scarcer than they were ever known to be. It used to be said that no one has ever seen a dead donkey, but the proverb was broken that year — there were and quantity. The price of a good donkey jumped from £6 or £7 to £12 within three weeks, and soon donkeys were scarcely to be had at all.

Costers and other donkey owners held meetings to discuss the situation, but the price rose to £15, and many a poor man was forced to pay it. It was the worst year on record for costermongers. Nobody knows to what price the donkeys would have risen, but an enterprising firm of shippers imported some big freights of donkeys from Spain. These sold like wildfire, and in a fortnight the donkey trade was at its old level. Meanwhile the country districts had been emptied of donkeys to supply the town. — London Answers.

Kerensky Now A Waiter

1920

Former Russian Leader Accepts Job in London "Beanery"

NEW YORK, N. Y., Jan. 1. — Alexander F. Kerensky, successor to the Czar as ruler of Russia, is now working in a "beef and beanery" in London, according to Gregory Zilboorg, who says he was Kerensky's secretary of labor and who spoke at the intercollegiate Socialist convention here.

"The poor fellow is down at the heel," he added. "He is in the same boat as I am."

Sweetheart's Eye in Fob

1905

Latest Fad of Fashionables in London and Paris

Women are not alone in taking up fads. The young men of Paris and London are rushing to death the watch fobs and scarf pins ornamented with their sweethearts' eyes. The eye is removed from a photograph, set in gold, under glass, and set into the bit of jewelry.

Archaeology in London

1902

Archaeology, according to Dr. Freshfield, who lectured at the London Institute, becomes an absorbing passion when once the initial stage is passed and the victim is too engrossed to find time for any other occupation.

He can find no better field for exploration than London — even without the aid of the steel excavator. He can see excellent Roman remains while doing business at the money order department of the post office. With a little more trouble he can study Saxon remains in Edward the Confessor's Chapel or the Chapel of the Pyx, at the Abbey. The Tower and the Bow Church woo him with allurements of the Norman style. Then the parochial records of the city and of the city companies call for the explorer who has caught the fever.

He will have the joy of learning that the plague of London was preceded by three other worse plagues in the same century, and that the dog — not the rat — was officially regarded as the disseminator. After this we may expect to see stockbrokers forsaking golf and gold and rubbing brasses in Westminster Abbey. — London Chronicle.


"Epitaphy"

A man may be simply mulish during his lifetime, but in the obituary notice it is always said that he had the courage of his convictions. — Denver Post.

Pawnee Rock in Kansas

1900

Historic Indian Battle Spot Disappearing Year After Year

Nine miles northeast of Larned, Kansas, is a low, disintegrating pile of red sandstone, which is all that is now left of the once imposing Pawnee Rock.

This rock, which received its name from the tribe of Indians known as the Pawnees, has an interesting history — a history acquired during the time when this part of the country was a wild and dreary desert, inhabited only by the Indians and herds of roaming buffalo. On this rock have been waged many bloody conflicts between the Indians and travelers of the famous Santa Fe trail, and also between the different tribes of plains Indians. Surrounded by vast prairies with the trail running along its base, it afforded a good hiding place and battle ground for the savages.

In its primitive state Pawnee Rock rose to a considerable height, and from its summit a beautiful panorama spread before the lover of nature, and even now, from its reduced height, can be seen for miles a widespread landscape. Comparatively little remains to be seen of that once imposing promontory of the Kansas "desert," for the hand of man has done more in twenty years to efface it from the earth than the elements in centuries of time.

The material obtained by the destruction of this landmark of the early days, is used in the construction of dwellings, bridges, etc., by the inhabitants in the fertile valleys surrounding this spot.


Unlimited Possibilities

Chicago remarks that at her present rate of increase she will outstrip New York in population within twenty-five years. Wait till the census of 1930 and Chicago may be setting the pace for London itself. — Mexican Herald.

"Silk Hats For Hire"

1910

Sign In Old Dickens' Quarters, London, Forced to Go Under Modern Pressure

London. — Among the landmarks of London that have disappeared of late are some old shops in Houghton street, Kingsway, the district that Dickens loved. The irruption of the house-breaker into this little thoroughfare has done more to disturb old buildings to make way for modern office blocks — it has displaced an old world little man, Christopher Clark, whose business for years has been one of the queerest in all London.

Till the London county council laid reforming hands on the dim little shop it bore in the window the notice:

Gentlemen's Silk Hats
Lent on Hire for Weddings
and Funerals.

The old man seemed strangely out of place in the daylight that had been let into that hitherto dingy bypath of the metropolis as he stood by the door a day or two before closing the shop for the last time and retiring as an old age pensioner. A big white apron enveloped his bent form and he peered suspiciously at the questioner who asked him how he fared.

Gradually, however, he thawed and admitted that he was eighty-four years old. "Certainly, I have had a good business. This used to be a good street for trade. Lawyers used to use it as a route to the courts, but all those changes are taking the life out of London. Folks now get underground like moles when they want to move about the city. And every messenger boy who wants to, sports a cheap tall hat.

"What sort of customers? Most respectable customers I have always had. If a silk hat was wanted for some special occasion I would supply a good one for a shilling a day — a hat no man could fail to be proud to go out in.

"A shilling a day, mark you" (the old man lovingly polished a shining specimen of his head gear with his sleeve), "and the hat to be returned to me in the condition in which it left the shop. Should a client require a hat for more than a day a reduction would be made. There was no fixed charge. There were times when a man positively had to have a silk hat, and — well, I was not too hard on the man whose fortune was small."

"No, trade latterly has not been always brisk. It has sometimes happened that more than a month has passed before a client has come in here to hire a hat, though sometimes I might have as many as four in a day. It used to be very different. Not even a funeral is conducted decently nowadays Everything is rush and tear."

And the old man sighed as he thought of the former days, when times were good and Londoners jogged comfortably along, with the silk hat as their badge of respectability on special occasions.

Famous Old London Bridge

1910

Men Whose Names Will Live in History Dwelt and Worked on the Structure

For centuries Old London bridge, with its double row of houses, was the home of generations who lived and traded over the Thames waters.

Holbein lived and painted there; Osborne, the 'prentice lad leaped through a window in the house of his master, Sir William Hewett, to the rescue of Sir William's daughter, who had fallen into the swollen flood of the river below, and by winning her for his wife laid the foundation of the ducal house of Leeds. Crispin Tucker had his shop on the bridge, to which Pope and Swift and many another author of fame made pilgrimages to purchase books and gossip with the waggish shopkeeper. Crocker's dictionary was printed "at the Looking Glass on London Bridge," and gigantic corn mills dominated the south end of the structure, not many yards from the wonderful Nonsuch House, a high wooden pile with turrets and cupolas brought from Holland.

Such in brief outline was the London bridge which linked the twelfth with the eighteenth century, and which, when it was on its last tottering legs, was removed to give place to its fine successor of our day, the stone in which is said to be nearly double that employed in building St. Paul's Cathedral.

Price of a Life in London Slums

1907

Willing Murderers Plenty in the Slums of London

I am told that a ten pound note will buy a man's life in London — that any unsuspicious person can fall into the Thames on a dark night or break his neck going round a slippery dark corner or fall under a van if a little bit of crisp paper changes hands, says a London writer.

I know that a very distinguished playwright, wishing to work out the plot of a melodrama, went into a high class den of thieves, made friends with some of the leaders and unfolded to them as something he wished to put into execution the plan he had devised for his villain's action.

He told his listeners that there was a very important financier he wanted out of the way for forty-eight hours while he played the very dickens on the Stock Exchange with the stocks the financier controlled. He suggested to his listeners that an attractive lady and a yacht would be the simplest means of insuring this object.

His hearers concurred. They knew the very yacht for the purpose. A skipper and a crew could easily be produced, and concerning the lady there would be no difficulty whatever.

"Then, after the forty-eight hours, we will of course bring him back," said the dramatist brightly, thinking of his fourth act.

A cloud came over the faces of his audience: "Well, guv'ner, of course, if you wish it. But it would save such a lot of questions being asked if he just went quietly overboard," the spokesman suggested.

Clockmaker Inside Clock Moving the Hands

1927

Hand Guides Clock.

London. — When the clock of the famous St. Paul's cathedral broke down recently, the hands were moved around by a man's finger in order that thousands of city clerks would not arrive late to work. Repairs took most of the day, and all that time a clockmaker with a watch before his eyes gradually moved the minute hand, second by second, until the mechanism was fixed.

—The Newark Advocate, Newark, Ohio, April 8, 1927, page 19.

An Old Time Playful Prisoner

1916

Over a century ago there occurred in London what the Annual Register called "a most unparalleled atrocity." It was only the theft of a pocket handkerchief from a pocket, but the circumstances of the deed explain the vehemence of this denunciation. Four men were on their trial for assaulting a man in his house at Ponder's End, putting him in fear and stealing from him, and one of them relieved the tedium of the trial, which lasted eight hours, by picking the pocket of one of the turnkeys as he stood in the dock. An official had the presence of mind to order the restoration of the handkerchief, and the prisoner had enough presence of mind to obey "with the most careless indifference," but the court, we read, "were horror struck." Justice, however, pulled itself together sufficiently to sentence all four men to death.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

The Ghost That Sang

1913

I had never seen a ghost, but once in the company of a friend, I heard a ghost sing.

It was in London. I must not mention the house, because to say a house is haunted in London is criminal libel. This house was haunted. I knew it was haunted, but the ghost had never troubled me. It bothered a friend of mine who spent an autumn in the house, by stamping up the stairs in the middle of the night. It troubled my secretary, who used to work alone in the house in the evening sometimes, by opening and shutting the doors. It troubled the police by lighting up the house and giving false alarm of burglars in the middle of the night. It never troubled me. I never saw it. I never felt it never heard it till this once.

It was about 1 o'clock in the morning. I was sitting in my sitting-room with a friend whom I call "X", who is a well-known author. (One generally adds in a ghost story "and who was a hard-headed man of business, utterly skeptical and completely matter of fact," as if that had anything to do with it.) We had just come in and were expecting another friend who lived in the house, and we were sitting up for him. We were talking about Swinburne's verse, and took down the first edition of "Atalanta in Calydon," which I then possessed and which I foolishly sold for a small sum (it was immediately afterward resold at an auction for large sum and went to America and is now in some collector's library), and I read out a passage. As I was reading we heard singing next door. said, "There's Phil," and didn't pay any further attention, as I expected him to come in, and I went on reading.

But the singing continued. It sounded foreign — like Spanish. This didn't surprise us, as Phil was in the habit of singing Provencal songs. The singing went on, and as he didn't come in, we went to meet him and opened the door. The next room was a tiny ante-room opening into another sitting room, and beyond this again was the smallest of bedrooms — not bigger than a cupboard. There was nobody there, but the singing went on; such curious singing, too; strange, alien, faint, tinkly, as if four confused voices were singing the song of an early century; it was unreal and it had a kind of burr in it, as if you were listening to voices on a telephone that is out of order. We walked through the rooms and we walked through the singing, and we heard it behind us still going on; and in the bedroom we found our friend asleep in his bed. Then the singing stopped. Now as we walked through that sitting-room I noticed my friend's hair, in Kipling's phrase, sitting up. I daresay he noticed the name thing about mine, or he would have done so had I any hair to notice. — Maurice Baring in the February Metropolitan.

—Middletown Daily Times-Press, Middletown, New York, February 15, 1913, page 4.