RT. HON. SIR WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
ROUND TABLE OF NEBRASKA
Barnes & Nobles Crossroads Mall
Omaha Nebraska, 68114
January 15th Sunday 2:00 pm
The Landmark Thucydides
Book One (pages 24 through 33)
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew
Act 5
Martin Gilbert’s Winston S. Churchill – The Challenge of War 1914-1916
Chapter ’I thought I would die of grief’
William Manchester’s The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Visions of Glory 1874-1932
Pages that pertain to ‘I thought I would die of grief’ 559-563
Carlo D’Este’s A Life Of Winston Churchill At War, 1874-1945
Pages that pertain to ‘I thought I would die of grief’ 255-258
Finest Hour ‘Journal of the Churchill Centre’ Autumn 2011
Pages 22-39
Douglas Southall Freeman’s R.E. Lee Volume1
Chapter 8 ‘Lee Is Brought Close To Frustration’
See the Biography online via the below link. The site contains extra documents pertaining to the book that aren’t featured in the printed version.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/home.html
February 19th Sunday 2:00 pm
The Landmark Thucydides
Book One (pages 34 through 43)
Shakespeare’s The Rape Of Lucrece
Lines 1 - 370
Martin Gilbert’s Winston S. Churchill – The Challenge of War 1914-1916
Chapter ’Loyalties’
Finest Hour ‘Journal of the Churchill Centre’ Autumn 2011
Pages 40-62
Douglas Southall Freeman’s R.E. Lee Volume1
Chapter 9 ‘Youth Conspires Against A Giant’
London & Gallipoli & Malta
19 May 1915
“I have done my turn and got it comfortably in the balls. So I can respectively retire from a glove fight and bury myself in archeology.”
Photo of Josiah Wedgwood
Bio from Martin Gilbert’s Winston S. Churchill’s The Challenge of War 1914-1916 (Page 123, 1971)
Josiah Clement Wedgwood, 1872-1943. Liberal MP, 1906-19. Commanded armoured cars in France, Antwerp, Gallipoli and East Africa, 1914-1917. Assistant Director, Trench Warfare Department, Ministry of Munitions, 1917. War Office Mission to Siberia, 1918. Labour MP, 1919-42. Vice-chairman of the Labor Party, 1921-4. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1924. Created Baron, 1942.
Josiah Wedgwood authored the below letter to Churchill from a Royal Navy hospital in Malta when it became apparent that Churchill was being forced to resign as First Lord Of The Admiralty. Josiah had been wounded during the Dardanelles Campaign and went onto receive the Distinguish Service Order for his service during the landing at Cape Helles on the SS River Clyde.
Letter from Martin Gilbert’s The Churchill Documents Volume 7 ‘The Escaped Scapegoat’ May 1915-December 1916 (Page 909, 1972)
Josiah Wedgwood to Winston S. Churchill
19 May 1915
RN Hospital, Malta
My dear Churchill
I cannot tell you with what indignation I learn that you have ceased to be First Lord. The jackals have got you at last. Don’t imagine that I care a damn about you, except as the sharpest weapon available against these German hounds. It is their rejoicing which puts the lid on the folly of the change.
I suppose they will now make you High Commissioner of S. Africa or Governor of Queensland, and you will take it for a living. Then they can make peace and kiss Wilhelm’s boots.
I am coming home. I have done my turn and got it comfortably in the balls. So I can respectively retire from a glove fight and bury myself in archeology. Think of having Arthur Balfour for a fighting chief!
Of course there is just a chance that you may choose to stick it and keep the non-party humbug up to the scratch in Parliament. If so, count me in every time.
Yours, very gratefully
Josiah C. Wedgwood
433 B.C. Athens Greece
No, they should have shared their power with you before they asked you to share your fortunes with them.
The Parthenon was completed in 433 B.C.
Excerpt from The Landmark Thucydides (Pages 25-26, 1996)
The Corinthians argue that Corcyra offered arbitration only after she began to fear Corinthian retaliation, and that her fear also motivates her request for an Athenian alliance.
…..
"As to their allegation that they wished the question to be first submitted to arbitration, it is obvious that a challenge coming from the party who is safe in a commanding position cannot gain the credit due only to him who, before appealing to arms, in deeds as well as words, places himself on a level with his adversary. In their case, it was not before they laid siege to the place, but after they at length understood that we should not tamely suffer it, that they thought of the specious word arbitration. And not satisfied with their own misconduct there, they appear here now requiring you to join with them not in alliance but in crime, and to receive them in spite of their being at enmity with us. But it was when they stood firmest that they should have made overtures to you, and not at a time when we have been wronged and they are in peril; nor yet at a time when you will be admitting to a share in your protection those who never admitted you to a share in their power, and will be incurring an equal amount of blame from us with those in whose offences you had no hand. No, they should have shared their power with you before they asked you to share your fortunes with them.”
February 1835 Washington, D.C
“Sweet, innocent things, they concluded I was single and I have not had such soft looks and tender pressure of the hand for many years.”
"THE BEAUTIFUL
TALCOTT,"
HARRIET RANDOLPH TALCOTT, NÉE HACKLEY,
WIFE OF CAPTAIN ANDREW TALCOTT, LEE'S IMMEDIATE SUPERIOR AT FORT MONROE
After a painting, made about 1832 by Thomas Sully, and now in Virginia
House, Richmond.
Excerpt from Douglas Southall Freeman’s R.E. Lee Volume 1 (Page 133, 1934)
Except for this expense and the dull
duties assigned him, Lee enjoyed the life of Washington and of the Arlington neighborhood. All his social impulses were aroused by it. "Your humble
servant . . .," he confided to 
Talcott, "has returned
to a state of rejuvenesency . . . and has attended some weddings and
parties in a manner that is uncommon. My brother Smith was married on the
5th inst. and the Bride I think looked more beautiful than usual. We
kept agoing till Sunday and last night I attended a Bridal party in Alexandria. . . . I will only tell [Mrs. Talcott] that my Spirits
were so buoyant last night, when relieved from the eyes of my Dame, that my
Sister Nanie was trying to pass me off as her spouse, but I was not going
to have my sport spoiled that way, undeceived the young ladies and told them
I was her younger brother. Sweet, innocent things, they concluded
I was single and I have not had such soft looks and tender pressure
of the hand for many years."14 Affairs of this nature were some
compensation for a routine that made Lee exclaim — in the language of many a
soldier of the same rank — "What a pity it is a man is a poor
lieutenant."15
I am
ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace
First Folio (1623) title page facsimile
Excerpt from Isaac Asimov’s Guide To Shakespeare (Pages 463-464, 1970)
Who’s the shrew now?
Petruchio orders Kate to deliver the women a long lecture on the duty they owe their husband and she does, saying in part:
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
--Act V, scene 2, lines 161-162
It may seem that this final speech is one long irony and that what Katherina has learned has been to show a false acquiescence so that she can rule her husband by pretending to be ruled by him. (In the movie version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, this interpretation is implied in the very last post-speech action.)
Yet it is not necessary to suppose this. It doesn’t matter who “rules.” Petruchio and Katherina are in love and as long as love exists, “ruler” and “ruled” lose their meaning. Petruchio looked only for money, and got love too. Katherina looked for nothing and got love. It is a completely happy ending.
Excerpt from Act 5 Scene 2 of The Taming Of The Shrew
Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind
brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
****************************************
Jane Austen Society of North America – Nebraska
Countryside Community Church 8787 Pacific Street
Omaha Nebraska 68114
Group’s facebook site http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=136194126402551
A watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen, believed to be drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (1810)
"It’s a very select Society, an’
you’ve got to be a Janeite in your ’eart … You take it from me, there’s no one
to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place."
“The
Janeites,” by Rudyard Kipling
January 14th Saturday 2:00 pm
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
Chapter 1 through 4
February 11th Saturday 2:00 pm
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
Chapter 5 through 8
But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
Title page of the first edition
Excerpt from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
Chapter 1 (Page 1, 1814)
About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
Miscellaneous Stories
Richmond Virginia
Late October 1862
They made a striking couple on their way to the military camps or over the autumn-tinted hills; the fifty-four-year-old President in Confederate gray on his white Arabian and the twenty-year-old girl on a handsome black horse named “Oliver Cromwell.”
Photograph of Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis taken in 1860
The below except pertains to Jefferson Davis and Margaret Howell who is his sister-in-law by marriage to Varina Howell. I was unable to locate a photo of Margaret Howell.
Excerpt is the from Hudson Strode’s Jefferson Davis Confederate President (Pages 324-325, 1959)
In late October, the President was happy to have Margaret Howell, Varina’s sister, back in the Richmond household after a prolonged stay with her parents in Montgomery, where her father had a position with the Commissary. He looked upon Maggie more as a daughter than a sister-in-law, for she had lived with the Davises since she was a little girl of eight. When she was fourteen, she had begun reading aloud to “Brother Jeff” in the evenings, to save his eyes, and he had taught her to be careful of her diction. In the crisp fall weather, Maggie rode horseback with him for an hour before sunset. They made a striking couple on their way to the military camps or over the autumn-tinted hills; the fifty-four-year-old President in Confederate gray on his white Arabian and the twenty-year-old girl on a handsome black horse named “Oliver Cromwell.”
On special occasions, Maggie donned a smartly tailored broadcloth habit trimmed with jet and a black velvet hat trailing a white ostrich plume. She wore white gloves and carried a gold-handled riding crop, a present from Richmond’s Mayor. Oliver had a white saddle and white reins, gifts from another admiring friend. Maggie wore her gala outfit when Company F, Second Regiment, Florida Infantry, chose to be called the “Howell Guards” in her honor, and the President presented them with a knot of green-and-gray silk colors.*
* The details are taken from an unpublished biographical manuscript furnished the author by a great-great niece of Jefferson Davis, Mrs. Richard W. Graves of Little Rock, Arkansas.
IQ 450
Sketch of Commander Stephen Powers
Excerpt is the from David Fried’s IQ 450 (Page 7, 2011)
In the next few weeks at NASA Medical Commander Powers came under intense analysis by orders of the space agency staff. He observed the results of the IQ test that morning. What Roberts heard astounded him. It showed a score of IQ 450, completely off the scale. It was difficult to give an exact estimate for an IQ that high. The research teams at the hospital were dumbfounded. This had never happened before.
See chapter One online via the below link.