Journalists From England

"He gives always the impression of fearless sincerity, and that is more important than being always right. One always feels that he is ready to say bluntly what every one else is afraid to say. Thus a feeling of apprehensiveness, conducive to attention, is aroused in the reader. And, in fact, he was, when he chose to be, a master of invective."

"In a certain sense, many of us mutilate the mind and render it impotent, for there is in the nature of man an irresistible tendency to religion; it is founded in our wants and passions, in the extent of our faculties, in the quality of mind itself. 's description of the untired soul darting from world to world, is a noble image of the restless longing of the mind after God and immortality. The stronger his sensibility, the more exalted his imagination, the more pious will every man be. And in this inherent and essential quality of our minds can we alone account for the various absurd and demonstrably false dogmas believed so honestly and zealously by some. Men run headlong into superstition in the same way as young boys and girls run into matrimony."

"Genius transcends the boundaries and frontiers of race, and makes its happy possessor an understanding citizen in whatever state he inhabits."

"The poet of England, he gave to the love of country, to patriotism as nowadays we call it, a voice which never shall be stilled. His histories are, and will ever be, the epic of our race."

"He was intolerant of fools and humbugs, and did not conceal his opinions; he had a real hatred of whiggery and indeed of liberalism in any form; and his unmeasured denunciation of all that he considered vulgar and insincere doubtless made him enemies. But he was fond of the society of his intellectual equals, whether at University dining societies or the Beefsteak Club, and his death removes a forceful and forthright character from the English literary world. Both he and his opinions would perhaps have been more at home in London somewhere between the Restoration and the French Revolution; but we may be glad that there was at least one of his sort among us in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

"Lamb was the first English writer of eminence whom Crabb Robinson tried to convince of the excellence of Goethe."

"The political game, as it is played in England, bears this resemblance to the game of fives, that you must get your adversary out before you may begin to score yourself."

"A bare record of his work can give but little idea of Whibley's place in the estimation of his contemporaries, which is attributable at least as much to the effect of his personality on those who came into contact with him as to his literary eminence. The warmth of his human sympathies, his brilliant wit, his love of good cheer, of good talk, and of all that was vital and sincere made him the best of companions. He had his prejudices, to which he would sometimes give alarming expression; but his impeccable intellectual honesty and the courageous vigour of mind and spirit which shone out in his conversation made him an acknowledged leader among his intimates. In this, as in some of his other qualities, including his unbending toryism, he resembled Dr. Johnson; and it may well be that like Johnson he will rather live through the influence which he exerted on those who were privileged to know him than through the written word. Nevertheless, he was a great master of the written word. He maintained throughout his life the loftiest standards of his craft: his literary style was in the highest degree chaste and austere. His most ephemeral work—and much of it was ephemeral—was always that of a scholar; and although as a writer he was critical rather than constructive, he was a power in his time."

"Lamb had written to Coleridge about one of their old masters, who had been a severe disciplinarian, intimating that he hoped Coleridge had forgiven all injuries. Coleridge replied that he certainly had; he hoped his soul was in heaven, and that when he went there he was borne by a host of cherubs, all face and wing, and without anything to excite his whipping propensities!"

"Again Shakespeare proves himself a gentleman in his moderation. He does not insist. He harbours no inapposite desire to make us better. Some of his critics have been saddened by the thought that his plays solve no moral problems and preach no obvious sermons—that, in fact, he is content to be a mere master of the revels, a purveyor of joy and pleasure. His refusal to preach is but another title of honour."

"In the days of my early acquaintance with Henley, some fourteen or fifteen years ago, I could never look at him without wondering why none of his artist friends had taken him for a model of Pan. They say he was like Johnson, and like Heine; and he had something of both. But to me he was the startling image of Pan come on earth and clothed—the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river, with halting foot and flaming shaggy hair, and arms and shoulders huge and threatening, like those of some Faun or Satyr of the ancient woods, and the brow and eyes of the Olympians. Wellnigh captive to his chair, with the crutch never far from his elbow, dragging himself when he moved, with slow effort, he yet seemed instinct with the life of the germinating elemental earth, when gods and men were vital with the force that throbbed in beast and flower and wandering breeze. The large heart, and the large frame, the broad tolerant smile, the inexhaustible interest in nature and mankind, the brave, unquenchable cheerfulness under afflictions and adversities, the frank appreciation and apology for the animal side of things, all helped to maintain the impression of a kind of Pagan strength and simplicity."

"It is in Henry V. that Shakespeare fashioned for us the true epic of England. The dramatic form sits very loosely upon it. It is epic in shape as in spirit. Splendid in eloquence, swift in narrative, it is a pæan sung in our country's praise. Its noble lines sound in our ears like a trumpet-call, and it has lost not a jot of its force and energy by the passage of three hundred years."

"How far is patriotism necessary to the equipment of a statesman? Now patriotism, out of fashion though it be to-day, should be the first and plainest of the virtues. It is but an extension of the feeling for family, which is the foundation of all society. A man who insults his father and despises his mother is a bad son. He is a bad citizen, who despises and insults his country. And a bad citizen, though he has every right to exist, is not likely to prove the wisest ruler."

"Genius transcends the common rules of life and blood."

"For Shakespeare, as I have said, was above and before all things a lover of England. With how bitter a contempt would he have lashed those friends of every country but their own, who nowadays unpack what they have of souls to strangers, and believe that flat treason is a mark of superiority! And Shakespeare, being a patriot, was a Tory also. He loved not those who disturbed the peace of England. He believed firmly in the established order, and in the great traditions of his native land. He was a firm supporter of Church and State."

"The “Musings Without Method” which Whibley contributed once a month to Blackwood's for thirty years, excepting two months, one of which was the last, are the best sustained piece of literary journalism that I know in recent times."

"Dined at Gooden’s, where I met among others , the Secretary of the . He surprised me by saying that he knew Goethe only as a botanist, in which character he thought most highly of him, he being the author of the New System of Botany; and that this is now the opinion of the most eminent botanists both in France and England. I rejoice at this unexpected intelligence."

"Like most Radicals, he [Richard Cobden] lived in a fool's paradise where facts are of no account, and where, if principles prove fallacious, it is not the fault of the optimist who frames them, but of some vile conspirator against the common good."

"It is impossible to maintain that these attributes [caution and progress] have been constant in the two great English parties. The Conservatives or Tories have often been progressive; the Liberals or Whigs stationary or retrogressive. Macaulay, in his famous reply to Lord Mahon, maintained that the Whigs had always kept in advance of the Tories, even though the whole nation might have moved onwards, just as the forelegs of the stag are always leading.But in fact both parties have passed and repassed one another, and have frequently exchanged places and influence; each by turn has had its phases of protection and free trade, imperialism and insularity, democracy and oligarchy, socialism and individualism. During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and down to the accession to power of William Pitt, the Tories, with some justice, boasted that they were the representatives of popular rights and national interests as against the aristocratic Whig cliques; and until the outbreak of the great war with France, it was the Whigs who were usually the party of foreign adventure and expansion, while the Tories had rather a stronger leaning towards peace and retrenchment and economic progress. Political reform has never been a Liberal monopoly; and social reform has found its champions at least as often in the Conservative ranks as in those of their rivals. On the other hand, the Conservatives, until the Beaconsfield Ministry of 1874, were not specially identified with the maintenance of the Empire; and in the 'fifties and sixties, under Lord Derby and Disraeli himself, they were less ardent vindicators of English pretensions abroad than the dominant section of the Liberals under Palmerston.Thus it is a difficult, perhaps even an impossible, task to draw a dividing line from age to age between the two parties, on the basis of doctrine. But the fact is that Englishmen, in their public as in their private life, have no great regard for abstract generalisations. They are careless about measures and much more particular about men. Fidelity to persons, rather than to principles, is the spirit of our party life."

"When men live in small communities, ... they cannot avoid personal participation in some public functions. So it was in the older rural England, before the organic social changes of the last century. Where a family might go without its winter firing, if the Lord of the Manor prohibited the cutting of turf and the collection of wood, every tenant would be a self-appointed member of a Commons Preservation Society. Much satire has been wasted over the Parish Pump; but one can understand the interest that humble installation must have possessed for the little group of households, which had to draw their own water from it daily in their own buckets. There were civic duties to discharge as well as civic rights to vindicate."

"Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall cooked and ate a root while researching her book Peonies: The Imperial Flower (1999). She described the flavour as 'reminiscent of turnips soaked in wallpaper paste mixed with '."

"You can't always predict what will get a child's imagination started, but in my experience they tend to remain absorbed longer with fantasy games."

"I have six grandchildren and when I have them with me I do love giving them treats — or a . But they are given as a surprise reward for behaving well, not in response to whingeing. One reason so many children are more overweight today could be that they lead less active lives than we did. We walked to school and spent more time playing in the fresh air. Houses were not as warm, so we used up more calories: food was fuel to keep us going. If grandparents are feeding grandchildren the same portions they ate as children, it's probably too much."

"For me, the perfect weekend is one spent with the whole family, ideally at the beachside cottage we rent in North Cornwall. I have happy memories of holidays in Cornwall when our children Sophy and were about the age our grandchildren are now. There are 11 of us: me, my husband Rob, Sophy and Hugh and their spouses, and our five grandchildren, and we do all the usual things: build s on and wait for the tide to come in and destroy them. We search for prawns, crabs and sea anemones in rock pools. We might even do some surfing. We'll go mackerel fishing in a boat, and if we catch anything (which everyone always does, that's the great thing about mackerel fishing). Then Hugh ... will whip out his little bottle of home-brewed and we'll all sit there in the middle of the ocean, tucking into fresh mackerel ."

"... Jane, 72, who in the mid-1960s worked as the first secretary of ’s fan club, and her husband, Rob, 76, a retired advertising executive, are far from being stereotypical old buffers. In fact, they were trend-setters in their day — among the first of the “down-shifting” young professionals who had the chutzpah to get off the corporate conveyor belt, sell up in London and go in search of a better quality of life in the sticks. ‘There was a time when people said to , “you must be Jane’s son”, she says wistfully. ‘Then suddenly I was Hugh’s mother’. Their decision to swap the security of a regular salary cheque for life in the freelance lane took considerable courage in 1971, with unemployment hovering at the 7% mark. “We did it for the children, really,” Jane recalls. “Both Rob and I were brought up in the countryside, and we wanted the same for Sophy and Hugh. We were living in at the time, but this was before it became posh. It was lively and multi-ethnic, with around the corner. It was lots of fun, but it was not the best place to bring up children."

"Mrs. Ross laid in our wood, wine and servants for us, and they are excellent. She had the house scoured from Cellar to rook the curtains washed and put up, all beds pulled to pieces, beaten, washed, and put together again, and beguiled the Marchese into putting a big porcelain stove in the vast central hall. She is a wonderful woman, and we don't quite see how or when we should have gotten under way without her."

"Minds which could soar to such metaphysical heights [of the Chuang Tzu] could not fail to be disillusioned by a refined but miniscule civilization constantly threatened with extinction by its own crass folly. Something had to take its place, and, just as today, either the jealous states would have to learn to live together or be crushed out of existence by an authoritarian power. It is not surprising, therefore, that a Chinese poet, faced with this problem, took refuge, as Rousseau did, in a revulsion from civilization itself."

"Janet Ross was one of those -like dragons for whom the word “formidable” was practically invented. Born in London in 1842, she spent the last six decades of her life — from 1867 until her death in 1927 — as an increasingly commanding personage in the Anglo-Tuscan colony around , where she was known (and feared) as Aunt Janet. freely acknowledges near the beginning of “Queen Bee of Tuscany” that Ross “had her limitations. Though intelligent and learned, especially for an autodidact, she was by no means brilliant. She had little imagination or inner life, and she made no towering contribution to humanity.” Thus the biographer throws down his own gauntlet: Why, then, are we reading about her? Downing, a co-editor of , and a walking Who’s Who of the , provides an answer in the form of It’s Who She Knew. And Aunt Granite (as the younger generation called her) knew everybody — or at least everybody who passed through Florence, which in Downing’s telling comes to the same thing. An endless procession of now forgotten artists and writers and social somebodies made their way to her door. Major figures do show up. In 1887, Henry James pays her a three-day visit, although “nowhere in her writings,” Downing acknowledges, somewhat sheepishly, “does she so much as mention James.”"

"How many of the travelers who visit now remember that she is one of the most ancient cities of Italy, and was famous when Rome was but a hamlet? They can see the ancient walls, but can they conceive that in the long history of the community settled between the rivers and the grey lines of buildings are but of yesterday? They may perhaps remember that a palace of Hadrian, one of the greatest or Roman Emperors, stood where the now stands; that temples to Apollo and to covered the sites of the churches of and in Borgo; that at the foot of the Via S. Maria grave priestesses of sang hymns in honour their goddess, who ripened the golden corn which covered the plains from the Monte Pisano to the coast; and that in a temple which stood in the Piazza S. Andrea love-sick young men and maidens presented their offerings at the shrine of Venus and made their vows to the goddess they evoked. But can they realize that in those far-off days, before our Christian era began, Pisa was a city so old that its beginnings were even then half-concealed, half-concealed, half-disclosed, in legends of her origin?"

"The great event of my life was my birthday, when I was allowed to dine downstairs, and to invite my particular friends. My fifth I well remember, for Thackeray played a trick on the "young revolutionist," as he afterwards called me, because I was born on the . My guests were , , , Bayley, and Thackeray, who gave me an oyster, declaring that it was like cabinet pudding. But I turned the tables on him, for I liked it, and insisted, as queen of the day, on having two more of his. I still possess a sketch he made for the of ' while I was sitting on his knee."

"Of 's seven children, was perhaps the handsomest and most gifted; the extraordinary vigour of her mind and body was almost overpowering, but it stood her in good stead during a long and not over-prosperous life, and was tempered by an excellent judgment and a very kind heart. No one ever appealed to her in vain; and in her old age children flocked round her with delight to hear "" or one of , so well and graphically told."

"From the very first possessed a correct and vigorous style, and a nice sense of language, which were hereditary rather than implanted, and to these qualities was added a delightful strain of humour, shedding a current or original thought all through her writings. That her unusual gifts should have been so early developed is hardly surprising with one of her sympathetic temperament when we remember the throng of remarkable men and women who frequented the Austins' house. The Mills, the s, the s, the Carlyles, the s, Sydney Smith, , , Jeremy Bentham, and Lord Jeffrey, were among the most intimate friends of her parents, and 'Toodie,' as they called her, was a universal favourite with them. Once, staying at a friend's house, and hearing their little girl rebuked for asking questions, she said: ' My mamma never says "I don't know" of "Don't ask questions." '"

"Cabbage (Red) ' alla Fiamminga.' Remove the outer leaves of a and cut it in pieces. Put it into boiling water for fifteen minutes, then dry, and place it in a sauce-pan with four ounces of , a chopped-up onion, a , two s, and a little salt and pepper. Boil slowly for about half an hour, stirring it often. When cooked, take out the bay leaf, add a little butter and serve quickly."

"... ... made the move, relocating to ... the . He formally entered the city in February 1865 ... Two years after this Janet arrived from Alexandria, Egypt, where she had been living with her husband Henry Ross, for the previous five years. Her trip to was planned as a short holiday. She booked a berth on a run-down steamer that took a route out from Alexandria across the Mediterranean to the southern Italian port of . From there she went by carriage northwards up the peninsula, through beautiful countryside with hills of old knotted olive trees and swathes of perfumed lavender, beneath a brilliant blue sky. Her plan was to arrive in Florence and stay for a fortnight as the guest of an old family friend and relative by marriage, , the British Ambassador to Italy. She had read about Florence, its treasures and its history. She was familiar with its great writers, Dante and Boccaccio, the unsurpassed beauty created by its painters, and the understated order achieved by its architects. She had heard stories of the proud patrician families with their age-old feuds and allegiances — names like , and — and she knew something of the story of Savonarola and how he was burnt at the stake in the . This was her opportunity to witness for herself the history that till now she had only read about in books."

"What! shall Saxon bonds be sundered By the sordid lust of gain? Shall the realms of peace be ravaged By the Rulers of the Main For the greed of gold or glory? No,—forbid it, God the Lord! Young America—Old England— Hand-in-hand, not sword to sword!"

"An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom."

"Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come."

"Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes."

"Essentially a compromise between Roman and common law, the Code Napoléon consisted of a reasoned and harmonious body of laws that were to be the same across all territories administered by France, for the first time since the Emperor Justinian. The rights and duties of the government and its citizens were codified in 2,281 articles covering 493 pages in prose so clear that Stendhal said he made it his daily reading. The new code helped cement national unity, not least because it was based on the principles of freedom of person and contract. It confirmed the end of ancient class privileges, and (with the exception of primary education) of ecclesiastical control over any aspect of French civil society. Above all, it offered stability after the chaos of the Revolution"

"On 20 November, front-line troops got 500 grams of bread per day, factory workers received 250, and everyone else 125 (that is, two slices). ‘Twigs were collected and stewed,’ records an historian of the siege. ‘Peat shavings, cottonseed cake, bonemeal was pressed into use. Pine sawdust was processed and added to the bread. Mouldy grain was dredged from sunken barges and scraped out of the holds of ships. Soon Leningrad bread was containing 10% cottonseed cake that had been processed to remove poisons. Household pets, shoe leather, fir bark and insects were consumed, as was wallpaper paste which was reputed to be made with potato flour. Guinea pigs, white mice and rabbits were saved from vivisection in the city’s laboratories for a more immediately practical fate. ‘Today it is so simple to die,’ wrote one resident, Yelena Skryabina, in her diary. ‘You just begin to lose interest, then you lie on your bed and you never get up again. Yet some people were willing to go to any lengths in order to survive: 226 people were arrested for cannibalism during the siege. ‘Human meat is being sold in the markets,’ concluded one secret NKVD report, ‘while in the cemeteries bodies pile up like carcasses, without coffins.’"

"Grossly to oversimplify the contributions made by the three leading members of the Grand Alliance in the Second World War, if Britain had provided the time and Russia the blood necessary to defeat the Axis, it was America that produced the weapons."

"It was on 7 March 1936 that Hitler comprehensively violated the Versailles Treaty by sending troops into the industrial region of the Rhineland, which under Article 180 had been specifically designated a demilitarized zone. Had the German Army been opposed by the French and British forces stationed near by, it had orders to retire back to base and such a reverse would almost certainly have cost Hitler the chancellorship. Yet the Western powers, riven with guilt about having imposed what was described as a ‘Carthaginian peace’ on Germany in 1919, allowed the Germans to enter the Rhineland unopposed."

"The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion and claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That represents 23,000 lives lost every day, or more than six people killed every minute, for six long years."

"More books have been written with Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death in 1821. Admittedly, many have titles like Napoleon’s Haemorrhoids and Napoleon’s Buttons, but there are several thousand comprehensive, cradle-to-grave biographies too."

"Between 1793 and 1797, the French would lose 125 warships to Britain’s 38, including 35 capital vessels (ships-of-the-line) to Britain’s 11, most of the latter the result of fire, accidents and storms rather than French attack. The maritime aspect of grand strategy was always one of Napoleon’s weaknesses: in all his long list of victories, none was at sea."

"Dunkirk was to hold out until the day on which all the Allied troops in the pocket who could embark to Britain had done so. Ramsay and the British Government initially assumed that no more than 45,000 troops could be saved, but over the nine days between dawn on Sunday, 26 May and 03.30 on Tuesday, 4 June, no fewer than 338,226 Allied soldiers were rescued from death or capture, 118,000 of whom were French, Belgian and Dutch. Operation Dynamo – so named because Ramsay’s bunker at Dover had housed electrical equipment during the Great War – was the largest military evacuation in history so far, and a fine logistical achievement, especially as daylight sailings had to be suspended on 1 June due to heavy Luftwaffe attacks."

"Despite hating mobs and technically being a nobleman, Napoleon welcomed the Revolution. At least in its early stages it accorded well with the Enlightenment ideals he had ingested from his reading of Rousseau and Voltaire."

"What is my message? That is what troubles me. I have not got a message. I am not by any means so ardent a Radical or as ardent in anything as I was. I have read so many newspapers on both sides that my old views have become so greatly modified that I no longer feel certain of anything. That is too strong, but it is true to a certain extent. Facts and existing circumstances prevent me being so enthusiastic as some are about remodelling the Universe."

"The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech if not the voice of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world."

"It is the great inspector, with a myriad eyes, who never sleeps, and whose daily reports are submitted, not to a functionary or department, but to the whole people."