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Daily Phil

2000-03-18

A midday call to my sister, only slightly coherent, my brain still whirling from everything I’m reading in an effort to meet deadlines. I mentioned in passing that most of the people I met this week update their websites every day, in the same way I might have mentioned they all flew in from San Francisco or they all liked watching West Wing.[1]

“How weird,” she said.

It hadn’t occurred to me this might be unusual. Perspective is good.

[1] They didn’t all fly in from San Francisco and I don’t know if they enjoy West Wing.

phil@gyford.com

Landor paid very little attention just then, but that same night he had occasion to think of it again. If the sentry outside heard, he paid no attention. It was common enough for the horses to take a simultaneous fit of restlessness in the night, startled by some bat flapping through the beams or by a rat scurrying in the grain. In ten minutes more a flame had reached the roof. In another ten minutes the sentry had discharged his carbine three times, fire call had been sounded in quick, alarming notes, and men and officers, half dressed, had come running from the barracks and the line. Still, during all this time, though the Tory Ministers in the Council appeared paralysed, the Jacobite lords assembled in secret junto in the very palace where the Council was sitting and the queen dying. Lady Masham's apartments were the scene of the last convulsive agitation of Jacobitism. From her the distracted leaders of that faction received the accounts of the progress of the queen's illness. Amongst these were Buckingham, Ormonde, Atterbury, and, when he was not at Anne's bedside, Robinson, Bishop of London. This prelate, when he attended to administer the Sacrament to the dying woman, received a message from her, which he was bound by the Duchess of Ormonde to promise to deliver, though it cost him his head. Probably it was some last remembrance to her brother, the Pretender; though it was supposed by some to be an order to the Duke of Ormonde, the Commander-in-Chief, to hold the army for the Stuart. Nothing, however, of the nature of this message ever transpired; but the Duke of Buckingham, on the separation of the Council, which had just obtained the affixing of the Great Seal to a patent providing for the government of the country by four-and-twenty regents till the arrival of the successor, clapped his hand on Ormonde's shoulder, saying, "My lord, you have four-and-twenty hours to do our business in, and make yourself master of the country." It was a forlorn hope. That evening Lady Masham entered her apartments in great agitation, saying, "Oh, my lords, we are all undone—entirely ruined! The queen is a dead woman; all the world cannot save her!" Upon which one of the lords asked if the queen had her senses, and if Lady Masham thought she could speak to them. She replied, "Impossible; her pain deprives her of all sense, and in the interval she dozes and speaks to nobody." "That is hard indeed," said one of the lords. "If she could but speak to us, and give us orders, and sign them, we might do the business for all that." "Alas!" replied another lord, "who would act on such orders? We are all undone!" "Then we cannot be worse," said a third. "I assure you," remarked another of these conspirators, probably Ormonde, "that if her Majesty would give orders to proclaim her successor in her lifetime, I would do it at the head of the army. I'll answer for the soldiers." "Do it, then!" swore the Bishop Atterbury, for he did not stick at an oath. "Let us go out and proclaim the Chevalier at Charing Cross. Do you not see that we have no time to lose?" Lady Masham told them they might waive debate; there was nothing to be done; her Majesty was no longer capable of directing anything. On which the Duke of Ormonde exclaimed, "Lord, what an unhappy thing this is! What a cause is here lost at one blow!" In these circumstances opened the year 1742. Fearing the consequences of the debate on the state of the nation that was to take place on the 21st of January, Walpole made a last grand effort to divide the party in array against him: this was, to buy off the Prince of Wales and his adherents. For this purpose he prevailed on the king to grant an additional fifty thousand pounds a year and the payment of all his debts, on condition that he should abandon the Opposition. Secker, Bishop of Oxford, was selected as the bearer of this offer; but the prince declined the proposal, declaring that he would listen to no overtures so long as Walpole continued in office. This was a stunning blow, but the tenacious Minister did not yet give in. He continued to avail himself of the interval before the 21st to bribe and bring over less distinguished men. The Opposition, however, were now every hour receiving fresh accessions of strength, and men who had stood the brunt of many years now went over to them. Lord Hervey joined Pulteney and Chesterfield; and Bubb Doddington, now perceiving that one side really preponderated, stepped out of his equivocal demeanour, and openly wrote to Lord Wilmington to entreat him to persuade the king to dismiss the obnoxious Minister. "I'll drive him well outside our lines, and as near to the house as I think it prudent to go, and then turn him loose," he said to himself. "If he's got the sense o' the horses up North he'll go straight home, and then my conscience will be clear. If he don't, I'll have done all I could. The Lord don't ask unreasonable things of us, even in atonement." Therefore he cut a young, thick-branched cedar and held it in front of him as he crouched and made his way to the gully and down it. Shorty started to gasp. "But I done all that—" However, things grew better after a time. The road broke away from the fields, and free winds blew over it. On either side swelled a soft common, not like Boarzell, but green and watery. It was grown with bracken, and Reuben laughed to see the big buck rabbits loppetting about, with a sudden scuttle and bob when he clapped his hands. Then a nice grinning dog ran with him a mile of the way, suddenly going off on a hunt near Starvecrow. Reuben came to Odiam aching with nothing worse than hunger. Then winter came, with carol-singing, and the choristers tramped round, lantern-led, from farm to farm. There in the fluttering light outside Kitchenhour, Old Turk, Ellenwhorne, or Edzell, Robert would watch Bessie's chicory-flower eyes under her hood, while the steam of their breath mingled in the frosty air, and they drooped their heads together, singing to each other, only to each other, "Good King Wenceslas," "As Joseph was a-walking," or "In the Fields with their Flocks." "It's unaccountable hard to know what to do about labour. Now as these fellers are gitting eddicated they think no end of theirselves and 'ull ask justabout anything in wages—as if a man hoed turnups any better for being able to read and write." "Ben, I swear I'm your true wife." But the cottage was shut. With its red-rotting roof between two tall chimneys it looked exactly like a rabbit's head between its ears; the windows were blind, though it was past seven o'clock, and though Reuben knocked at the door loudly, there was no one to be seen. He prowled once or twice round the house, fumbling handles and window-latches, but there was no way of getting in. He listened, but he could not hear a sound. He pictured Rose and Handshut in each other's arms, laughing at him in his wretchedness and their bliss—and all the time he wanted the woman's blood more than the man's. "It is a pity she should be the wife of such a carle"—mused his lord. HoME 我要看一级毛片免费的 ENTER NUMBET 0017
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