Conservative History Journal

What would New Year's Eve be like without Prince Orlofsky's party in Die Fledermaus? Allow me to quote from the great Victor Borge's My Favourite Intervals.

As the curtain goes up, we see an empty room in the Eisenstein house. This is a crucial moment in the operetta, because it's the last time anybody knows for sure what's going on. After that, the plot is one mass of confusion, with mistaken identities, people making love to their own wives, and other absurdities. In many productions on Die Fledermaus, performers wander in from other operas and sing music by other composers and by the time the chorus gets to the big number at the end of Act Two, the singers are so befuddled that they gurgle things like "hu hu hu hu" and "dui-du, dui-du, la la la, la la la". 

The setting of Die Fledermaus is "a watering place near a large town" but since nobody gets to see either the town or water, you might as well forget about that part of it. The main characters are Gabriel von Eisenstein, when he isn't pretending to be the Marquis Renard; Rosalinde, his wife, when she isn't pretending to be a Hungarian Countess; Adele, her chambermaid, when she isn't pretending to be Olga the Actress; Frank, the jailor, when he isn't pretending to be the Chevalier Chargrin; and Alfred, the singing teacher, when he isn't pretending to be Gabriel von Eisenstein. The only person who isn't pretending to be anybody else is Prince Orlofsky, and he's always played by a woman. 

With the traditional staple of conservative Christmas greetings: Dingley Dell.

Today is the anniversary of the Tamworth Manifesto, issued by Sir Robert Peel on December 18, 1834. It remains one of the most important documents in the history of the Conservative Party.

Historical fiction was the introduction to history for me as it must have been for many people. Somehow, as time went on and I read more history and biography I began to find the fictional version less interesting. I still reach for Georgette Heyer's Regency romances if I want a pleasant comfortable afternoon and there are one or two (not many more) historical detective story writers whose work I enjoy but I doubt whether I would get quite as involved with The Three Musketeers as I did at the age of 10. The real story behind the siege of La Rochelle, on the other hand, is fascinating.

Still, one must applaud historical fiction and its continuing popularity, not to mention the fact that through Hilary Mantel's work it has acquired a literary status it did not possess before. An admission: have not yet read Ms Mantel's books about Thomas Cromwell.

History Today has a list of historical novels published in 2012, starting with Bring Up The Bodies and ending .... well, with a slightly unexpected choice. Do read the short article.

For the man, woman and child who has everything, there are wonderful presents (TH is not given to advertising usually) to be had from the Conservative Party Archives.

How can one resist Labour Isn't Working playing cards or a Socialism throttling the country mug? Many excellent posters and postcards as well as The Carlton Club by Sir Charles Petrie and Alistair Cooke (now Lord Lexden)

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which "established legislative equality for the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire with the United Kingdom, thereby marking the effective legislative independence of these countries, either immediately or upon ratification".

This vital piece of legislation that brought the concept of the Empire forward toward the eventual creation of a Commonwealth is not as widely recognized as it ought to be. Nor is it taught at schools but then how much  history is taught at schools?

What a good thing would it have been if the Act had  included India, admittedly a more complicated problem. Instead, there was the Government of India Act of 1935, the longest piece of legislation enacted by that time. Opposed by many Conservatives,  including Winston Churchill, it did attempt to create a new political entity in India and was partially put into effect before the outbreak of the Second World War. Would it have prevented the creation of the Indian National Army that turned to the Japanese for help to secure Indian independence? Would it have ensured a more peaceful development than the terrible story of the Partition and the subsequent bloodbath?

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, thus finally bringing the United States into World War II. That and Hitler's monumental folly in declaring war on that country. However, the link I  have, via The Raw Story,  is to a fascinating story of one eyewitness account, which was considered to be too harrowing at the time (yes, well, war is harrowing) being published. Here is that harrowing tale.

Gosh, this makes me really important. Not just an article in History Today but a podcast, as well.

One cannot read it in full on-line (or not for free, anyway) but December's issue of History Today has an article by me on Yelena Molokhovets, the Russian Mrs Beeton.

This may not seem to be an entirely suitable theme for the Conservative History Journal but from time to time we do look beyond such themes. The purges and show trials of post-Second World War Eastern Europe affected those countries and, consequently, the whole Continent and it history profoundly. The last of those trials took place sixty years ago this week. On the second blog there is a long article on the subject. I can't say enjoy it but I do hope people will read it and find it interesting. I welcome any reasonable comment, question and criticism.

An interesting posting by a friend of this blog, Stephen MacLean on 1776 and the ideas of freedom expressed by, among others, Adam Smith and the writers of the Declaration of Independence, also on how these ideas have been undermined by succeeding government on both sides of the Pond. Just a hint: the Founding Fathers did not intend the President to be quite such an important and politically overwhelming figure. Whether he is actually powerful is a moot point.

Anyone who asks what sort of narrative can British Muslims have should be told about the tens of thousands of them who fought for Britain in two world wars and at other times. There are other narratives as well, but this is the one I am concerned with in particular today as I was sent this link.

The Princess Royal has unveiled a sculpture of Noor Inayat Khan, a WWII agent dubbed the "Spy Princess" by her biographer Shrabani Basu, in London's Gordon Square Gardens.

Raised in Britain and France and a descendant of Indian royalty, bilingual Noor Inayat Khan was recruited by the elite Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1942 to work in Paris as a radio operator.

Records from the national archives show she was the first female wireless operator sent to Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

After evading capture for three months, the spy was imprisoned, tortured and eventually shot by the German Gestapo at Dachau concentration camp in 1944.

Her final word - uttered as the German firing squad raised their weapons - was simple. "Liberté".

Liberty was a notion the pacificist-turned-war-heroine held deeply, according to Ms Basu.

Noor Inayat Khan's great-great-great-grandfather was Tipu Sultan, an 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore. He refused to submit to British rule and was killed in battle in 1799.

Born on 1 January 1914 in Russia to an Indian father and American mother, the agent's infancy was spent in London.

The family moved to France when she was a child and lived in Paris, where she was educated and learnt fluent French.

The national archives describe how the sensitive young woman studied both medicine and music.

In 1939 the Twenty Jataka Tales, a collection of traditional Indian children's stories she had retold, were published in Le Figaro.

When war broke out in 1939, Noor Inayat Khan trained as a nurse with the French Red Cross.

She fled the country just before the government surrendered to Germany in November 1940, escaping by boat to England with her mother and sister.

In case you happen to be in or around London, you might like to attend the talk by Dr Caroline Shenton in the House of Lords about the day Parliament burned down. Here are the details.

Tory Historian has now been sent the full obituary of Professor John Frederic Main published by the Institute of Civil Engineering , the hero of the previous posting. He was fully as remarkable as his wife, Elizabeth and her first husband, Frederick Burnaby.

 JOHN FREDERIC MAIN.

Obituary published by the Institute of Civil Engineers, Volume 110, Issue 1892, 01 January 1892 , pages 394 –396, 

JOHN FREDERIC MAIN, son of the late Mr. David Main, Civil Engineer, was born at Greencastle, in the island of Jamaica, on the 7th of July, 1854. Taken as a child to England, he received his early education at the Southern Division Grammar School, at Southsea. 

In October, 1872, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won a mathematical scholarship, and in the Tripos of 1876 was ranked Tenth Wrangler. He was President of the Cambridge Union Society in the Easter term of that year. In January, 1872, he had matriculated seventh in honours at the University of London, where he subsequently passed the first and second examinations for the degree of Bachelor of Science, and in June, 1877, obtained that of Doctor of Science, the special subjects taken being Light, Heat and Acoustics treated mathematically, he being then barely twenty-three years of age. 

In the following October he was appointed Lecturer in Mathematics and Applied Mechanics at University College, Bristol. With characteristic energy, he sought additional qualifications for this post by obtaining practical experience during three summer vacations, which he spent respectively in carrying on experimental work at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, in practical work at Professor Stuart’s workshops, in the same place, and in the drawing office in New York, of Mr Thomas Main, who subsequently became Manager of the works of Messrs. John Roach and Sons, at Chester, Pennsylvania. 

Dr Main’s connection with University College, Bristol, lasted for four years, and proved one of importance in the history of that Institution. In the first year, his gifts as a lecturer and teacher were so signally demonstrated, that the Council of the College entrusted to him the arduous task of founding and organizing the School of Engineering, which he had induced them to try to establish, and appointed him Professor of Mathematics, Applied Mechanics and Engineering-an office he held for the following three years. Chiefly owing to his exertions, the newly-founded school gathered strength, and soon grew into one of the most promising departments of the College. The system adopted was that suggested some years before by the late Professor Rankine, and subsequently formulated by Dr. Main’s predecessor at Bristol, Mr. W. R. Bonsfield, viz., a combined practical and theoretical training, to consist of the pursuit of theoretical studies at the College during the winter months, and of practical work in engineering shops during the summer months. The course of Mechanical Engineering was arranged to extend over three years, and various manufacturing engineers in the neighbourhood consented to receive students of the College into their workshops and offices as articled pupils. 

To carry out this plan  successfully required no ordinary energy and work; those who owe their training to him could have had little knowledge of the difficulties of the task Dr. Main had undertaken; yet, with all the labour this imposed, he could find time to give several “ Gilchrist ” lectures in Bristol and the surrounding neighbourhood, and for the study of astronomy. But hard work began, after a time, to tell on a constitution which had never been robust, and in 1881 he decided to apply for the post of Assistant Professor of Applied Mechanics at the Normal School of Science (now the Royal College of Science), South Kensington, the duties of which were lighter than those of his Bristol professorship. 

Unhappily, Dr. Main’s tenure of this post proved but brief. Before he had been a year at South Kensington his health gave way, and although he struggled manfully against a severe pulmonary attack, it made such inroads on his strength as to force him to leave England in the spring of 1883, and to make his home for a time at Davos, in Switzerland. He benefited so much by his stay in the High Alps that there was for a time great hope of his complete recovery, and his post at South Kensington was kept open for more than a year. 

It was a delusive prospect, however; his health, though greatly improved, was never, during his residence in Switzerland, so far re-established as to allow him to revisit England for longer than a few weeks; and even in Switzerland he was at least once brought very near death by acute illness. It was his fate to remain in that country until late in 1887. In the last months of his residence, he contemplated, and actually made some progress towards, setting up at St Moritz a telescope of considerable power, which Sir Howard Grubb was making for him. He also made some observations and experiments in the Engadine on the viscosity of ice, an account of which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. 

In October, 1887, his health having to a certain extent improved, Dr Main determined to go to Colorado, in the hope of regaining a still larger measure of strength. After a short stay in England, he settled in Denver at the beginning of the following year. There his expectations seemed more than realized, something of his former vigour, and a considerable amount of his old energy, were restored. 

Again his life became busy; he gave lectures, edited and wrote for a local newspaper, and frequently travelled great distances. 

In partnership with an Englishman, Mr. Thomas J Pulling, he entered into business in connection with investments and mortgages of town property in Denver. So successful were they, that towards the end of 1890 they decided to start a limited company under the style of the Denver Banking and Investment Corporation, of which he and Mr. Pulling became managers. More than half of the capital was secured in England, and when, in the spring of 1891, Dr. Main visited this country, he was apparently in excellent health. 

In the following December, however, symptoms of paralysis began to manifest themselves, and though for a time these appeared to have yielded to treatment, and even to have been entirely subdued, they were revived in a more malignant form by an attack of scarlet fever. After a brief rally, he died on the 10th of May, 1892, at Denver, at the early age of thirty-seven. 

Of the personal character of Dr. Mann, it is impossible to speak too highly, without using words which would sound like exaggeration. Possessed of intellectual powers of a high order -- a fact which was strikingly supported by his personal appearance -- he at the same time had only a frail constitution, and hence never attained that position in the world which his friends anticipated for him, and which in their opinion he was so well fitted to occupy. 

Dr. Main was elected an Associate of the Institution on the 6th of December, 1881.

The obituary does not mention his marriage but we can presume that he and Elizabet Burnaby met when he was at St Moritz and married there or, possibly, during that short trip back to England. Why he then decided to go to Colorado is slightly mysterious though it is true that the climate there would have been of great benefit to him. Nor do we find out much about the other people on the tombstone who appear to be relatives. Could they have been family members who had settled there earlier?