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Great web design delivers great results
The ONLY test of our design work is whether it supports your digital strategy. Design for design's sake might get you compliments but ultimately will not deliver the required results for your business.
What makes a great website design?
We could talk for hours on this but here are some top level points that our entire team focus on
- Professional look and feel that delivers immediate credibility for your brand
- Well coded, fast loading pages
- Optimised for search engines
- Design adapts to different device sizes
- Compelling, well organised content
- High impact headlines that are easy to scan read
- Well-positioned calls-to-action
- Design that supports clearly defined user paths
Web Design Services
Responsive Web Design
User Experience Design (UX)
User Interface Design (UI)
Logo Design
Banner Display Ads
E-books & Digital Brochures
Graphic Design
Email Newsletters
With their excellent customer project management, technical and design capability, I would highly recommend Together Digital to any business looking for high-quality design and development.View All Testimonials


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Purpose: Early intervention services are available to families with children under the age of three with developmental delays or disabilities. In an effort to incorporate new evidence and research, the New Mexico Family Infant Toddler Program, which regulates New Mexico's early intervention programs, has chosen to evolve its teaming terminology to emphasize a transdisciplinary approach to service coordination and delivery. This teaming model is currently termed the "Transdisciplinary Team Approach", which is a recent update from the "Primary Service Provider Model". The overall purpose of this pilot study is to explore the Transdisciplinary Team Approach as it is being piloted in New Mexico's early intervention programs. Specific questions to be answered include: 1. What is early intervention (El), and what are its benefits/costs? 2. How is El provided in New Mexico: What services are provided, what are the eligibility rules and how are physical and occupational therapy services delivered in New Mexico? 3. What is the Transdisciplinary Team Approach, and why is it being piloted in New Mexico? 4. What are the perceptions of physical therapists and occupational therapists in New Mexico's early intervention programs? Methods: Subjects: Two licensed occupational therapists and one licensed physical therapist who worked in early intervention in New Mexico were identified from a convenience sample of licensed physical and occupational therapists working in early intervention programs in New Mexico. Methods: After development of the "Questionnaire for Physical or Occupational Therapists in Early Intervention (El) Programs in NM", the researchers Dr. Elizabeth Provost and Jennifer Ploss, SPT submitted an application to the Human Research Review Committee for an exempt survey study, and received confirmation of approval in January 2012. All participants were given ari informed consent form prior to agreeing to participate. No compensation was given,and no potential adverse events were identified for participants. Primary data from this study was kept on original paper copies of questionnaires,with random ID numbers instead of names. Data Analysis: Interview responses were analyzed for general themes by the student researcher, Jennifer Ploss. Results: All three therapists interviewed had similar responses regarding background and current service delivery and coordination in New Mexico, including caseloads, eligibility for early intervention, primary medical diagnoses, other available services, coordination with team members, and assignment of children to a specialist's caseload. The only difference in current provision of services was the types of impairments and functional limitations listed by the two occupational therapists compared to those listed by the physical therapist. All of the therapists had heard of the Primary Service Provider model, but none had heard of the new terminology (the Transdiscipl inary Team Approach), nor had any of them received any formal training or information on these models. Major concerns of the three therapists interviewed in this pilot study included role boundaries, scope of practice issues, referral rates to specialists, efficacy of treatment, and quality of family-centered services. Perceived benefits included decreased cost, improved continuity and congruency of care, decreased intrusion into family life, and enhanced family empowerment and independence. Conclusion: This pilot study found that early intervention specialists in New Mexico are not being adequately educated and trained on the new Transdisciplinary Team Approach being implemented by the New Mexico Family Infant Toddler Program under the Department of Health. There were many misconceptions about this teaming approach, questions about how services would be provided and coordinated, and how this change in policy would affect current early intervention providers. Future directions include improved education and training for providers, self-assessment and enhanced outcomes reporting for NMFIT and individual early intervention programs, and improved research in the areas of teaming, intervention, family satisfaction and empowerment, referral rates, and cost.
Submitted by Dyanna Monahan (email@example.com) on 2014-04-21T22:24:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2012-6.pdf: 1956635 bytes, checksum: 158f03a2cc1eef7e17f9d48afb1424e0 (MD5), Made available in DSpace on 2014-04-21T22:24:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2012-6.pdf: 1956635 bytes, checksum: 158f03a2cc1eef7e17f9d48afb1424e0 (MD5)
Document Type
ealy intervention, physcial therapy, occupational therapy
Recommended Citation
Ploss, Jennifer. "Early Intervention Service Provision In New Mexico." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/dpt/66
Available for download on Monday, March 14, 2118

subset: commoncrawl


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Sharpton: DNA Could Tie Me to Thurmond
Monday, February 26, 2007; 11:04 PM
NEW YORK -- The Rev. Al Sharpton said he wants a DNA test to determine whether he is related to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond through his great-grandfather, a slave owned by an ancestor of the late senator.
"I can't find out anything more shocking than I've already learned," Sharpton told the Daily News, which reported the link Sunday based on genealogists' findings.
Sharpton's spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, confirmed Monday for The Associated Press that Sharpton, who learned about the connection last week, plans to pursue DNA testing. Noerdlinger had no further details.
Professional genealogists, who work for Ancestry.com, found that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.
"Based on the paper trail, it seems pretty evident that the connection is there," said Mike Ward, a genealogist with Ancestry.com.
The company's chief family genealogist, Megan Smolenyak, said Sharpton would need to match his DNA with a present-day descendant to see if they are biologically related.
"I think the odds are slim he would match," Smolenyak told the News.
The revelations surfaced after Ancestry.com contacted a Daily News reporter who agreed to have his own family tree done. The intrigued reporter then asked Sharpton if he wanted to participate. Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004 calling for racial equality, said he told the paper, "Go for it."
The genealogists, who were not paid by the newspaper, uncovered the ancestral ties using a variety of documents that included census, marriage and death records.
Thurmond, of South Carolina, was once considered an icon of racial segregation. During his 1948 bid for president he promised to preserve segregation, and in 1957 he filibustered for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill.
Thurmond was seen as softening his stance later in his long life. He died in 2003, at 100. One of the longest-serving senators in history, he was originally a Democrat but became a Republican in 1964.
His children have confirmed that he fathered a biracial daughter. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' mother was a housekeeper in the home of Thurmond's parents.


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Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shoppe has raised his target price for Apple's stock from US$275 to $300 on expectations that the iPad launch on April 3 will be a strong success, and that the company will also report a strong quarter ahead of iPhone sales, according to Yahoo! Finance.
"To put this in perspective, the March quarter typically represents Apple's seasonal nadir, and our estimates would imply the March quarter of 2010 would be the second strongest quarter in company history," Mr. Shoppe said.
Apple began taking pre-orders and reservations for the iPad on March 12, and will begin delivering the multimedia tablet on April 3. Some iPad pre-order customers have been reporting that they are already seeing preauthorization holds on their credit cards. Some buys have said via Twitter that their credit cards have been charged for their iPad purchases, too.
Mr. Shoppe also raised his earning estimates for the quarter that runs through the end of March from $2.27 up to $2.75 a share, and his revenue estimates are up from $11.45 billion to $12.26 billion.
Apple is currently trading at $231.04, up 4.39 (1.94%).


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Why Private Career College
Canadian Welding Skills is registered as a private career college under the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005. Our programs qualify for Employment Ontario and/or Second Career financial assistance. We are also members of the Association of Registered Private Welding Career Colleges and the Canadian Welding Association. As a Private Career College, our facility and programs must undergo annual government inspection and approvals ensuring we meet industry standards. Continually meeting industry standards also ensures our programs qualify for government assistance or attractive student loan options.
But we believe the real benefit of attending a Private Career College comes from our skill focused approach. Our focus is welding and welding alone. Ninety five percent of our student's time is spent welding and we can tailor our instruction to the unique needs of each student, to accommodate learning styles.
Our job is not finished until you secure your first job as a welder. We'll assist you with finding employment by teaching you job search techniques, posting job openings and preparing your resume. We'll help you understand the job interview process, and we're always just a call away as your career grows in the welding industry!
Do the comparison on cost related to community college programs – our students are often employed shortly after a 10 week course, allowing them to earn wages and gain valuable work experience while college students are still going to school.


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All readers of this blog are asked to click the link below
and once at the site, to add their name to the petition there
Turkish Invasion of Cyprus Should End
We the undersigned wish to make known our demand that
Turkey should withdraw all its troops from Cyprus and allow a "Solution for Cypriots by Cypriots"
13th - 19th July 2009
Theatro Technis in association with the National Federation of
Cypriots in UK presents a week of events to coincide with the 35th
anniversary of the Greek Junta Coup and the Turkish invasion &
occupation of 37% of the Republic of Cyprus. We also celebrate the
accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the EU since May 2004, which we hope will lead to the re-unification of the island as a truly Independent Federated State for all its citizens.
Monday 13th July, 7pm:
Raising of the flags of the Republic of Cyprus and of the European Union.
An exhibition of the Archives of Theatro Technis and of the Cypriot community in Camden and the launching of the booklet Building on the Foundations funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Unity Theatre Trust.
Music and songs by the Michaeloudes Orchestra & EKA choir, and the Harpist Richardo Curbello, followed by poetry by Vasilis Panayi and others.
Click here to view report & full video of this event
Tuesday 14th July, 7-9pm:
British Parliamentarians in association with the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK hold a debate with an invited audience on 'A Solution for Cyprus: By Cypriots For Cypriots' in Committee Room.14, House of Commons, SW1.
Click here to access this video at archive dot org
This video is also available at a YouTube playlist here
Wednesday 15th July, 7.30pm:
A seminar presented by Lobby for Cyprus at Theatro Technis
Cyprus: Getting it Wrong, Getting it Right
* Mr. Martin Packard a former intelligence analyst and author of 'Getting it Wrong: Fragments from a Cyprus Diary 1964' will explain the partitionist approach pursued by the British Authorities during the time he served in Cyprus.
* Dr. Klearchos Kyriakides, a lawyer and Senior Lecturer at the School of Law of the University of Hertfordshire will explain what has gone wrong and how we can 'get it right'.
Click here to access the entire video of this event at archive dot org
The 'Getting it Wrong' video is also available at a YouTube playlist here
This material, with further videos, is available at the Martin Packard 'Getting it Wrong' Book - Fan page at Facebook
Thursday, 16th July & Friday 17th July, 7.30pm:
Reading of short stories about the first and second generation of Cypriots in UK as part of Theatro Technis' archives by actors/ troubadours.
Saturday 18th July, 7.30pm:
Film and Documentary screening about Theatro Technis and Cyprus.
Virtual visitors can view videos online at Theatro Technis' MySpace,
and at the Theatro Technis History and Archives web Page
Sunday 19th July, 4pm:
Anti-occupational rally for Cyprus at Trafalgar Square starting from outside the Turkish Embassy, 43 Belgrave Square,SW1 at 3.00 pm. Main speaker Mr. Neoklis Sylikiotis, Minister of Interior of The Republic of Cyprus.
Click here to access this video at archive dot org
This video is also available as a YouTube Playlist here
View newly released video archive item
from the Camden Cypriot Festival 1991
Martha and Eve - Meze at the Jazz Cafe


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ComicBook (Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil miniseries review) A great start, but too bad it was just that - a start
In 2007, Jeff Smith, the creator of Bone, tried his hand at retelling Captain Marvel's origin story and modernizing it. I admit to knowing little about this franchise, so I did a bit of research, and this story basically hits all the major notes of the franchise, while making changes to fit the times.
Unlike in some continuities, Billy and Mary are little kids in this miniseries. This results in quiet a contrast when Billy says his magic word and transforms into Captain Marvel, a grown man. Not only that, but he's also his own separate person, meaning Billy essentially switches not only bodies, but to an extent, personalities with Captain Marvel. I like the idea of Billy/Captain Marvel being separate yet united, as it brings up some interesting questions regarding how much Billy or Captain knows, and what they think, since they are technically not the same person.
As for Mary, she gets her powers entirely by accident, via Billy transforming right in front of her and accidentally transferring some power to her, allowing her to change into Mary Marvel. But interestingly, Mary remains a young girl when she transforms, and keeps her same mischievous, playful personality, causing a bit of headache for Captain Marvel.
Old characters from the original series are repurposed. Dr. Sivana is now a corrupt military leader in the US government, and a truly hateable character. The other main villain is Mister Mind, who shows up and attacks Earth in a very strange plot that I'm not going to try to describe here.
The comic - both in its story and its cartoony, expressive art style - has a balanced mood that makes it generally all-ages appropriate without being either sappy or childish, or all dark and moody. However, I feel it could have done without the mild profanity that's used at times.
My only other complaint is that, good as it is, The Monster Society of Evil is only a four-part miniseries that feels like it was setting up more. We get introduced to the characters, see Billy and Mary get acquainted with their newly-found superpowers, see them fight off a threat... and that's it. Jeff Smith didn't make any more Shazam comics, sadly. This could have been the start of something great.


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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
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Today's sermon reflects on Psalm 126.
The hymn is Now Thank We All Our God.
Click on listen to stream audio of this sermon or click on download to then transfer and play it on an iPod or other portable mp3.
Subscribe in iTunes to listen every week: http://bit.ly/ACoB_iTunes
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Arlington Church of the Brethren
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(703) 524-4100 or (571) 243-5344
Church Office Hours
Wednesday 9-11 am; Thursday, 4-8 pm; Sunday, 12-3 pm *Call Ahead
Worship TimesSunday Worship at 11 am; Sunday Classes 9:45 am for all ages. Contact Us
Located approximately 7 miles west of downtown Washington, D.C., between Arlington Boulevard (U.S. Route 50) and Wilson Boulevard, in Arlington County, and about one mile east of Seven Corners, where Arlington Boulevard and Leesburg Pike (VA Route 7) intersect.View Map & Directions
© 2019 Arlington Church of the Brethren. All Rights Reserved.


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Etching weekend class with Carole Shepheard August 2015 at her Kawhia workshop with a wonderful water view. How magic to sit drinking coffee with a wood pigeon sitting outside the window.
This is an etching done from a photo I took at Riverton in Southland, NZ a couple of years ago. What a magic spot and this rickety old wharf just begged for attention.
On the right is an aquatint made from the same etched plate, using two tones of ink.
This uses the same plate in a Chine Colle technique using one tone of ink for printing, but onto heavy paper overlaid with tissue that has been coloured previously with three colours.
What a wonderful weekend and a wonderful bunch of women. We had a lot of fun, made a few mistakes which were turned into opportunities, but in the end what fabulous results. Everyone went away tired but happy. Carole is a wonderful teacher, and shares her knowledge in a seemingly effortless way. She must've been very tired at the end of the weekend too, with eight of us to wrangle.
Welcome, I'm so glad you're here! Being creative is a big part of my life, and this is where I can show you some of the things I do.
Monday, 17 August 2015
Etching workshop
3 comments:
- Jude Brokenshire said...
WOW Carol you have done a brilliant job Guess I know what you will be producing for a while
- 17 August 2015 at 19:30
- kiwiali said...
These all look fabulous Carol. What a difference each technique makes to the result!
- 18 August 2015 at 19:35
- Gayle said...
Lovely to find you here Carol. I really like the etching with the aqua tint. I've scrolled back through some previous blogs. Each card is delightfully unique, it looks like you really enjoy the process.
Keep creating. Gayle P
- 18 August 2015 at 23:41
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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UW IT Computing Survey
The Division of Information Technology is asking students, faculty and staff to respond to an on-line survey in April of 2014 to help IT improve service offerings and support. Respondents who completed the survey will be entered to win their choice of:
- iPad Mini (16 GB, Wi-Fi)
- Kindle Fire HD (16 GB)
- Kindle Paperwhite
- Apple iPod touch (16 GB)
- Xbox 360 4 GB Console
- Canon PowerShot SX510 HS
Follow the links below to the appropriate survey:
Student Survey OR Faculty / Staff Survey———————————————————————————————————————-
The Views expressed in this blog are that of IT staff members and are purely recommendations. Opinions and how-to's given here are not necessarily those of the University of Wyoming as a whole.


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Coupon & course info
Course Name: Learn Comic Book Coloring: Color Comics Like The Pros v1.0
Subtitle: Learn how to digitally color comic, anime, or manga art with Photoshop from a professional colorist–includes brushes!
Instructor: Taught by K Michael Russell, Professional Colorist (HACK/SLASH, JUDGE DREDD)
Category: Lifestyle
Subcategory: Arts & Crafts
Provided by: Udemy
Price: $199 (before discount)
Free coupon code: See above (no charge for coupon)
Review info & popularity
As of March 28, 2016…
Students: 1,108888 students enrolled
Ratings: 11011 reviews
Rank: ranked #89 in Udemy Lifestyle Courses
Brief course description
Course Description
If you're interested in learning how to color comic, manga, or anime art with Photoshop, this is a great place to start! You can learn the secrets, tips, and tricks that can make coloring comics a fun hobby, a part-time job, or maybe even a career!
This course, taught by Judge Dredd and Hack/slash colorist K. Michael Russell, includes all the basics to get started as well as some advanced techniques.
(Read more about this course on the official course page.)
K Michael Russell bio
K Michael Russell has been working professionally as a comic book colorist since 2011. Recent work includes Judge Dredd for IDW Publishing and the mini-series Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain for Image Comics.
(Learn more about this instructor on the official course page.)
Recommended courses
If you like this course, you might also be interested in:
1. Diet Free Weight loss : Slim thinking permanent weight loss
Get permanent Weight loss and beat cravings learn to change your relationship to Food and feel great without dieting
Taught by Alan Kirwan, Creator of solutions for changing minds & transforming lives
A Complete Guide to Create and Tell You Story, the One that Must be Told.
Taught by Mr. Johnny Ray, International best selling novelist, speaker, charisma coach
Let home improvement mentor Steve Maxwell show you how to complete repairs on simple drywall issues before painting.
Taught by Steve Maxwell, Learn Hands-On How-To Living Skills With Steve
4. Let's bake cakes, breads and pastries!
Go from zero baking experience to baking like a pro with these simplified and easy recipes.
Taught by SistersCookies Baking Academy, Executive Chef , Master Baker ,Udemy Instructor
5. Art of World Travel – Live the awesome life
Based on real experiences
Taught by Startup Saturdays, Thought leaders in entrepreneurship and business
Final details for this Udemy course
Languages: English
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Lectures: 16 lessons
Duration: 3.5 Hours of video
What you get: Set up line art for coloring
Target audience: This course is designed for anyone interested in learning how to color comic art with Photoshop
Requirements: Some familiarity with Photoshop (not much required)
Access: Lifetime access
Peace of mind: 30 day money back guarantee
Availability: available online, as well as on iOS and Android
Download options: check course to see if you can download lessons


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With all these ridiculous polls going around about who is the most overrated NFL quarterback and coach this season, how about we take a look at the most overrated head coach of all-time. Of course, these polls are nothing more than opinions, but without making a case for them, they are meaningless. Being overrated does not mean one is not excellent at their chosen field, it simply indicates one is being fawned over for one reason or another.
This particular NFL head coach, who is often looked upon as a god like figure, won two championships and has the most career victories (328). He also coached for thirty-three seasons and failed to win a championship in his last twenty-two years while coaching for the same team. Do you know of any coach today who would hang around twenty-two years without a title? Well, Don Shula was able to pull it off.
Yeah, we all know about Shula's historic undefeated season and two consecutive Super Bowl titles, but how about his underachievements? Obviously, Shula was able to rest on the laurels of his two Super Bowl titles and milk it for all it was worth.
The 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only undefeated NFL team (regular season and playoffs) in the history of the league. The 2007 New England Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season, but were undone in Super Bowl XLII by a miraculous catch by New York Giants wide receiver David Tyree and some funky timekeeping during the Giants last drive in the final two minutes, when time magically stopped. Thanks to the Hands of God intervening, the Patriots did not get their undefeated season and the Shula legend lived on.
How about the 2009 Indianapolis Colts, who were 14-0, when first year coach Jim Caldwell decided to pull quarterback Peyton Manning in the third quarter against the New York Jets and proceeded to lose 29-15? Can anyone forget the sight of Manning on the sideline with his arms folded looking bewildered and downright pissed off? What's the big deal anyway? The opportunity for an undefeated season only comes around once an eternity. Thanks to the Hands of God Part II, Shula could once again sleep easy knowing his accomplishment was safe and sound.
In Super Bowl III, Shula's powerhouse Baltimore Colts were favored by 18 points over the less than formidable New York Jets. In what would go down as the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, Joe Namath would lead the Jets to a 16-7 victory. The game would have been closer if the Colts had not bothered to show up.
Shula managed to make it back to the Super Bowl in the strike shortened 1982 season. The AFC Championship game between the Jets and Dolphins was dubbed the Mud Bowl because the Orange Bowl field remained uncovered the night before during a torrential downpour. Due to the atrocious field conditions, Jets speedster wide outs Wesley Walker and Lam Jones were nullified, helping the Fins win 14-0. Hey, it was only the most important game in the AFC that season, so what's the big deal of not having the field covered the night before? This move was not from the Hands of God, but from the Hands of Shula himself.
The following week in Super Bowl XVII, John Riggins rushed for 166 yards and this time it was the Washington Redskins who rained on Shula's parade with a 27-17 victory. Thanks mainly to Riggo, the win gave another overrated individual, quarterback Joe Theismann, his only title.
There were no Hands of God involved when Shula made his final Super Bowl appearance after the 1984 season against the San Francisco 49ers. This time it was the arm of Joe Montana and the hands of Roger Craig and Dwight Clark which gave the Fins a good old fashioned 38-16 butt kicking.
During the 1980's and 1990's, Shula had the most prolific passer in the game, Dan Marino, and was unable to win a Super Bowl with him. Being part of the NFL's competition committee, he also had the least penalized team year after year. All this in addition to being allowed by the NFL to cheat the Jets out of a fair game in the 1982 AFC Championship. And still, no Super Bowl victory for the Don.
No doubt, Shula was an excellent coach, especially if you omit his last twenty-two seasons. However, considering the blatant favoritism displayed towards him by the league, he was still unable to bring home the title after 1973, making him less than great and the most overrated coach of all time.


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In addition to choosing cruelty-free alternatives for the chocolates and candy in the Easter basket, there's the tradition of the Easter Eggs that needs a little makeover…
Coloring Easter Eggs
Rather than dying a bunch of eggs that most people wind up throwing away a few days later, painting and decorating wooden eggs can become a new family tradition. Year to year, you can add to a collection of your child's handiwork– extra-special keepsakes to have around when they no longer believe in you-know-who. Use a clear coat sealer when the painting's done so that the creative masterpieces will stand the test of time. Don't forget to have the kids paint the date on their eggs!
Easter Egg Hunts
Even when I was a young child, egg hunts made use of the hollow plastic eggs that opened in half. These are great for public egg hunts as well as those you create in your home. What's fun about using these eggs is that you can get really creative about what to put inside: you can fill the eggs with a few jellybeans or a Jolly Rancher or two; or, I remember a few Easter holidays when a couple of "select" eggs had dollar bills inside; or maybe the Easter Bunny will leave a special little note inside one.
A super-cool option — especially if you're planning an Easter Egg hunt for a bunch of kids in the neighborhood: ready-made assortments of plastic eggs by Bee International. I love the "Noah's Ark" eggs that are shaped like animals and filled with Smarties and bubble gum. They also have "Sports Buddies" eggs — plastic eggs that have "bodies" of footballs and baseballs. For those of you who want to merge the secular with the religious, Bee also offers religious tin eggs, inspirational pictures etched on colorful metallic eggs. I made this discovery at a Wal-mart Neighborhood Market.
Not ready to give up real eggs completely?
Then please please please go for the FREE-RANGE eggs. At the very least, use cage-free eggs, which are only slightly more expensive than eggs coming from battery-cage hens. They're not 100% cruelty-free, but the more humane treatment of the hens makes the cost well worth it.
If you (or family and friends) remain unconvinced that switching to cage-free is worth the extra cents to the dollar — or that it's just not that important to be a priority — I urge you to watch and share this video, Wegman's Cruelty. Be warned: it will leave no doubt in your mind because the images are haunting. About 17 minutes in, the story of one hen in particular brought tears immediately to my eyes. Unfortunately, it is representative of what's happening in the industry, rather than being an aberration from the norm. If you're going to continue eating eggs, at the very least please do not support this kind of cruelty with your consumer dollars.


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Duke University uses kangaroo court proceedings to find student guilty of rape.
I have been curious what would happen at Duke University if a young woman got a man drunk in order to have sex with him. Would she be found guilty of rape? Well now I have a good idea of the answer thanks to this blog post by K. C. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center:
As explained under oath by a Duke dean, if sexual intercourse occurs between two equally intoxicated people, neither of whom can give consent, the male student is a rapist.
So I guess if only the male student is drunk, then no rape has occurred.
[See also, "Rape Culture on Campus Overblown."]
It also seems that a man can be convicted of rape without even getting to cross-examine his witnesses. According to K. C. Johnson:
The school lost in court last year, in a case filed by Lewis McLeod, whom Duke had branded a rapist after a highly dubious procedure. McLeod obtained a temporary restraining order that prevented Duke from moving ahead with expulsion, but his overall status was left in limbo, awaiting a trial this year. McLeod's attorneys have sought to amend their complaint; its contents reveal new troubling items about how Duke handled the case.
The issue in the McLeod case was the accuser's level of intoxication. Three housemates of McLeod observed the accuser and did not consider her intoxicated, slurring her words, or unable to form rational thought. The accuser filed a case with the Durham Police, but that investigation was closed—suggesting a lack of probable cause for her complaint. Yet Duke, after a slipshod investigation, would find McLeod culpable, on grounds that suggest indifference to Title IX's obligation of no gender discrimination. […]
The amended complaint adds defendants, bringing into the lawsuit against Duke's disciplinary czar, Dean Stephen Bryan, and the "independent" investigator hired by Duke to handle sexual assault cases, Dr. Celia Irvine. I've written about Irvine previously; though she worked for the NYPD, she did so as a psychologist and appears not to have investigated any sexual assault cases, or any other criminal cases for that matter. Irvine did not respond to a request for comment about her background.
Irvine's centrality to the amended lawsuit is explosive in its details, but also important for broader concerns. Universities—under pressure from the federal government—have moved toward the single-investigator model; Harvard did so this summer, and UVA's proposed new procedures will ensure that future complaints, such as Jackie from the Rolling Stone story, will only need to convince an investigator of their veracity. (Duke's procedures don't go this far, in that Duke retains a hearing, but as the complaint makes clear, Irvine's report essentially decided the case.) Yet as universities have turned over their inquiries to a single investigator, they have been extremely reluctant to release the guidelines they've used to hire investigators, the terms under which those investigators operate, or even the names of the investigators themselves. The McLeod case is a rare instance in which outsiders have been allowed behind the curtain to see how these "independent" investigators operate.
Irvine's conduct appears particularly troubling in light of information presented in the amended complaint. It turns out that North Carolina law requires people serving as private investigators to have conducted 300 hours of training; no evidence exists that Irvine ever had such training. It's unclear whether Duke knew about Irvine's training level.
Irvine's investigative technique was—to put it mildly—odd. Though the key issue in the case was the accuser's level of intoxication, Irvine never contacted neutral witnesses—employees of the bar where McLeod and the accuser met, the taxi driver who drove McLeod and the accuser to McLeod's off-campus residence. The "investigator" also chatted with the witnesses she did seek out over the phone. (Though Irvine is based in Chapel Hill, it takes less than 30 minutes to drive to Durham, even on a day with heavy traffic.) Irvine then presented summaries of her exchanges with witnesses, without turning over to the hearing committee (or McLeod) the transcripts of her interviews.
The case only gets crazier. At the so-called "hearing" McLeod had no recourse to question Irvine's claims because Irvine was never there. She simply turned in her written report and never had the burden of facing the man she was accusing on such a flimsy pretext.
There is even more craziness recited in the blog post. I don't have space for it all here. It is important to realize that these methods are fully approved and are being heavily pushed by the Federal Government. We are seeing our university system being remolded as a place of Stalinesque show-trials.
How do you think the Obama Administration would like to transform our court system in cases of gender conflict or perhaps race conflict?
When George Will tried to point out the insane policy of the Feds on this matter, he was treated like a rape apologist by Liberals and self-righteously expelled from my local St. Louis newspaper.
Duke is not an anomaly; it is a pattern. As Robby Soave writes at Reason.com: "These miscarriages of justice are staggering, and yet they are common features of nearly every university rape investigation I have come across."


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March 2007 Message from Dan
Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors:
So how is it, you ask, that the last thirteen years of Charles
Dickens's second, secret, and hidden life were shaped
to some degree by cannibalism?
Well, it's interesting that you asked me that question
right now. By great good coincidence I happen to have recently
embarked upon a novel covering the last five years of Dickens's
life following his near death (and that of his mistress Ellen
Ternan and her mother, who were traveling with him) during
the Staplehurst railway accident of 1865, and it turns out
that much of Dickens's secret life in 1865, an entire
second life that he would keep hidden until his death in 1870
(on the anniversary of the Staplehurst accident) and which
remains a mystery to this day, can be traced back to events
connected to the disappearance of the 1845 Sir John Franklin
In October of 1854, all of England was shocked to read Dr.
John Rae's report on what he had discovered during his
search for the Franklin Expedition. Rae, an officer in the
Hudson Bay Company, quoted testimony from the Inuit –
or "Esquimaux" the English called those native
peoples then – as well as citing artifacts and human
remains found, to prove that Franklin and his men were not
only dead but that they'd resorted to cannibalism in
their final days.
This idea of cannibalism did not sit well with Lady Franklin
who still held out hope for her husband's rescue, even
nine years after the expedition disappeared. Nor did it sit
well with one of the most famous and influential Englishmen
of his day, Charles Dickens.
was fascinated with Rae's reports and facts –
as biographer Fred Kaplan writes – "Dismemberment
and cannibalism had been powerful images in his life from
childhood on and had been direct and indirect motifs in his
fiction, the self feeding on itself, the world broken into
animistic fragments, the society engorging through the individual."
But actual cannibalism among British officers and gentlemen?
Dickens rejected the entire concept.
His first stage was denial, arguing that the report was "hasty
. . . in the statement that they had eaten the dead bodies
of their companions." He then told his friends and readers
that he had examined "a wilderness of books" to
show "that the probabilities are all against poor Franklin's
people having dreamed of eating the bodies of their companions."
From denial, Dickens quickly moved to anger. In one of his
stranger and least-becoming essays, published in the journal
Household Words (of which he was an editor and frequent
contributor), Dickens launched a scathing attack on the "savage"
– i.e. non-white races. Specifically in this case, the
Esquimaux tribes that had reported to John Rae that Franklin's
crew had resorted to cannibalism. ". . . we believe
every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and
cruel," wrote Dickens. He went on to deny absolutely
that " . . . any of the members [of the Franklin
Expedition] prolonged their existence by the dreadful
expedient of eating the bodies of their dead companions .
. . ."
Then, rather than responding point by point to the testimonies
and artifacts reported by John Rae, Dickens leaped straight
to his childhood reading to corroborate his argument that
cannibalism was outside the realm of possibility for Englishmen:
"In the whole wide circle of the Arabian Nights,
it is reserved for ghoules, gigantic blacks with one eye,
monsters like towers, of enormous bulk and dreadful aspect,
and unclean animals lurking on the sea-shore . . ."
So there! Englishmen do not eat Englishmen, dead or alive.
Only monsters from the deep can do that.
a year later Charles Dickens entered a new stage of reaction
to the Franklin tragedy and mystery – a level of reaction
open only to writers and to novelists in particular: he rewrote
history. In truth, Dickens talked his friend Wilkie Collins
into writing a play about the Franklin Expedition and calling
it The Frozen Deep. Wilkie Collins, who will be the
not-always-reliable narrator of my own novel about Dickens,
was a more dissipated and bohemian friend of the famous writer,
a sometimes collaborator and serious student of Dickens. Collins
was also laudanum-opium addict and flagrant womanizer who
flaunted Victorian society by living with one woman outside
of marriage while having a child with another woman, all the
while seducing young actresses: in other words, a perfect
companion for Dickens at this point in the famous writer's
life where he was fighting the restrictions of domesticity,
nine children (with a tenth on the way), and encroaching middle-age.
After months of discussing and outlining the play, Dickens
and Wilkie Collins began work on it in earnest in the hot
summer of 1856. Collins joined other guests at the crowded
Dickens' household, but the two writers' habits
did not perfectly mesh. Dickens tended to go to bed by midnight
most nights and to rise early – breakfast was served
no later than nine o'clock no matter who the guest might
be – but Wilkie was a creature of the late-night casino
and often did not rise until after eleven o'clock. Denied
his breakfast by his host, Collins was sometimes found eating
pâté de foie gras by himself of a noontime.
the play, from Wilkie Collins's pen but with constant
direction and rewriting from Dickens, flowed well enough.
Dickens was writing the complex novel Little Dorrit
at the same time and his themes and obsessions seem to have
blobbed over from one project to the next. In a letter to
his friend Forster, Dickens comments about "unnatural"
heroes and laments the absence in fiction " . .
. of the experiences, trials, perplexities, and confusions
inseparable from the making or unmaking of all men! . . ."
Some biographers wonder if Dickens is speaking about his
confused hero of Little Dorrit, Arthur Clennam, or
of Richard Wardour – the character Dickens was preparing
to play in The Frozen Deep. In either case, even
before Dickens and Wilkie Collins had finished the first draft
of the play based on the Franklin Expedition, Dickens was
able to give precise instructions to painters Clarkson Stanfield
and William Telbin about the sets they were to paint for each
As Collins's writing and Dickens's rewriting
and revisions of The Frozen Deep continued through
the autumn of 1856, the main character of Richard Wardour
– played by Charles Dickens, of course –changed
completely. Collins had envisioned Wardour, the leader of
the fictional expedition based on Franklin's, as older,
not very competent, and more or less a villain. Perhaps even
a maniac. Dickens rewrote and played Wardour as a complex
and angry – but in the end, totally self-sacrificing
– character: "perpetually seeking and never
finding true affection" were Dickens's notes
on the revised character.
Dickens had always been a fiend for rehearsing. (When he
created a new form of performance art by doing dramatic author
readings for hundreds and then thousands of people at a time,
he would rehearse each reading himself at least 200 times
before attempting it in public.) Now he drove his little amateur
troupe of players hard and himself harder. A marathon walker
– (as many writers have attested over the centuries,
long walks help one to think out plots and pages) –
Dickens would rehearse his Wardour part during one of his
20-mile walks through the county fields of Finchley and Neasden
– "Young, with a fair sad face, with kind
tender eyes, with a soft clear voice. Young and loving and
merciful. I keep her face in my mind, though I can keep nothing
else. I must wander, wander, wander – restless, sleepless,
homeless – till I find her!"
He did not mutter these words; he shouted them into the air,
just as he would do on stage when the play opened in his large
home called Tavistock House in London on January 6, 1857 --
Twelfth Night and his oldest son Charley's 20th birthday.
His special Wardour-monologues, Dickens had kept to himself
– rehearsing in private, not even sharing them with
his collaborator and fellow-actor Wilkie Collins. Charles
Dickens may have been the stage's first modern Method
Actor; he disappeared so completely into his roles (including
the role of "famous writer Charles Dickens", I
would argue) that many of his contemporaries – including
veteran professional actors and stage managers such as Macready
– thought him temporarily demented during and immediately
after performances.
One example of Dickens's Method was a scene in the
last act where, rushing in anguish from the stage, "Wardour"
tosses the other men on stage aside like a raging bull, leaving
them bruised for days. His son Charley, who played one of
those men, later wrote of the "realism" –
" . . . in his demented condition in his last act
he had to rush off the stage, and I and three or four others
had to try and stop him. He gave us fair notice, early in
the rehearsals, that he meant fighting in earnest in that
particular scene, and we very soon found out that the warning
was not an idle one. He went at it after a while with such
a will that we really did have to fight, like prize-fighters,
and as for me, being the leader of the attacking party and
bearing the first brunt of the fray, I was tossed in all directions
and had been black and blue two or three times before the
first night of the performance arrived."
That first performance had about a hundred people crowded
into the little schoolroom at Tavistock House that Dickens
had converted into a theater. A small orchestra played an
overture and incidental music that Dickens had paid the young
musician Francesco Berger to compose. Before the lights came
up, Dickens's dear friend John Forster intoned the Prologue
written by Dickens – a prologue setting out the theme
of the play in which the hidden deeps of the human heart are
compared to the terrible and frozen depths of the Arctic North
the secrets of the vast Profound
Within us, an exploring hand may sound,
Testing the region of the ice-bound soul,
Seeking the passage at its northern pole,
Soft'ning the horrors of its wintry deep,
Melting the surface of that 'Frozen Deep'"
the secrets of the vast Profound
Within us, an exploring hand may sound,
Testing the region of the ice-bound soul,
Seeking the passage at its northern pole,
Soft'ning the horrors of its wintry deep,
Melting the surface of that 'Frozen Deep'"
the secrets of the vast Profound
Within us, an exploring hand may sound,
Testing the region of the ice-bound soul,
Seeking the passage at its northern pole,
Soft'ning the horrors of its wintry deep,
Melting the surface of that 'Frozen Deep'"
play opens in Devon. Clara Burnham – played by Dickens's
daughter Mamie – is haunted by fears for her fiancée
Frank Aldersly (played by Wilkie Collins) who has been away
for years on a polar expedition. On the same expedition is
its commander, Richard Wardour, who is Clara's rejected
lover. Wardour does not know the identity of the rival who
succeeded him, but has sworn to kill the man if they ever
meet. Now, Clara knows, Wardour and her Frank are in two ships
– the HMS Wanderer and HMS Sea-mew –
frozen tight in the Arctic ice near each other in their attempt
to force the North-West Passage. Frank Aldersly is totally
ignorant of Wardour's love for his fiancée.
Clara is agonized at the thought that some accident will
reveal her two lovers' identities to each other, terrified
for her fiancée's fate not only at the hands
of the Arctic but at the hands of Wardour, when her nurse
Esther – who has the Second Sight – shares her
bloody vision in the crimson sunset (Dickens had taken great
pains to create lighting that realistically depicted sunlight
at all hours of the day for this play) –
"I see the lamb in the grasp of the Lion . . ."
gasps Nurse Esther in the trance of her Second Sight, "
– your bonnie bird alone with the hawk – I see
you and all round you crying, Bluid! The stain is on you –
Oh, my bairn, my bairn – the stain of that bluid is
on you!!"
The second act is in the Arctic regions where Dickens-Wardour
and Wardour's second in command, Lieutenant Commander
Crayford are discussing their slim chances of survival in
the face of cold and starvation. "Never you give
in to your stomach, and your stomach will end in giving in
to you," the veteran explorer Wardour advises Lt.
Crayford. Wardour goes on to explain to Crayford that he,
the commander of the expedition, loves the Arctic precisely
"because there are no women here." In the
same act he will exclaim "I would have accepted
anything that set work and hardship and danger, like Ramparts,
between my misery and me . . . Hard work, Crayford, that is
the true Elixir of our life!" And finally --
"the only hopeless wretchedness in this world, is the
wretchedness that women cause."
Here speaks a writer and a man not happy in his marriage.
At the end of Act II, the remaining officers and crew decide
that their only chance for survival is to send two men –
selected by chance – to head out across the frozen depths
to seek relief for the stranded expedition. The two men chosen,
of course, are Wardour the jilted lover and his successor
in love, Frank Aldersly. The second act ends with Wardour
discovering that Frank is his rival.
Act III opens with Clara Burnham traveling to Newfoundland
searching for news (much as the real Lady Franklin had hired
her own ships and gone to the North with her niece Sophia
Cracroft). Into a remote ice-cavern along the coast staggers
a starved, exhausted man just escaped from an ice floe. Clara
sees that it is Wardour and there are hysterical accusations
that he has murdered – and perhaps eaten? – Aldersly.
Dickens rushes out and returns with Aldersly in his arms,
alive. "Often," gasps Wardour, "in
supporting Aldersly through snow-drifts and ice-floes, have
I been tempted to leave him sleeping."
Collapsing now from exhaustion, starvation, and the exertion
of keeping his rival alive on the ice for so long, Dickens-Wardour
manages to say, "My sister, Clara! – Kiss
me, sister, kiss me before I die" and then dies
in Clara's arms, with her kiss upon his lips and her
tears streaming down upon his face.
Sentimental crap, you say? Perhaps. But the Victorians were
emotionally and psycho-sexually primed for sentimental crap.
The little schoolroom-theater was awash in tears and not just
from the women in the audience. Reviewers invited to the first
performance (there were a total of four performances from
this troupe) recorded the audible sobs not just from the audience
but from fellow actors on the stage. Wilkie Collins himself,
standing there in costume and make-up, was heard to whisper,
"This is an awful thing!"
Since Collins was weeping at the time, we have to assume
it was not a criticism.
Professional reviewers were deeply impressed by Dickens's
performance and by his immersion in the role. (After one performance,
Dickens fainted. In his last years this would become a more
common reaction to his exertions in violent readings he performed
of Bill Sikes's murder of Nancy, ending in the author
too drained to stand or speak.) William Makepeace Thackeray
attended one of the four performances and remarked, "if
that man would now go upon the stage, he would make his £20,000
pounds a year."
That was wild hyperbole in 1857, but within a few years Charles
Dickens would be making almost that much during his exhausting
reading tours, which were comprised as much of Method Acting
as of reading. Dickens himself was pleased with the effect
immediately after the play, writing to friends who hadn't
been there that the audiences were "excellent"
and he had never seen any audience so " . . . strongly
affected by theatrical means." In other words,
they blubbered like children with their toys snatched away,
which was always the effect that Charles Dickens most wanted
to achieve.
But what, you ask after showing much patience, does this
have to do with a cascade of events leading to Dickens's
second, secret, and hidden life?
Well, it turns out that though Dickens thought he was finished
with The Frozen North – the author wrote of
the sad sounds of workmen "battering and smashing
down" his school room theater -- The Frozen
North was not finished with him. And events following
his next series of performances would change his life, and
the life of his family and most of those around him, forever.
author had turned down many entreaties to revive The Frozen
Deep for paying customers – neither he nor his
players liked the idea of acting for money – but in
June of 1857 Dickens was shocked to hear of the sudden death
of his writer-friend, Douglas Jerrold. Dickens knew that Jerrold's
family would be left in dire financial circumstances and,
always the Tom-Sawyerish organizer and leader of his band
of literary friends, he came up with the idea for a benefit
series of performances – T.P. Cooke in revivals of Jerrolds
Black-Eyed Susan and Rent Day, Thackeray and
Russell giving lectures, and Dickens himself giving both day-
and night-readings.
Also, of course, since there had been such a clamor for more
showings of The Frozen Deep, the play would be revived
with proceeds going to the Jerrold fund. The goal was to raise
The Gallery of Illustration on Regent Street was rented for
the series of performances. The Queen not only gave her name
in support of the effort but acknowledged that she was intensely
eager to see The Frozen Deep and suggested that Mr.
Dickens select a room in Buckingham Palace in which he could
provide a private performance.
Dickens refused. (Never one to pay attention to protocol
that bound all other men, Dickens had airily turned down an
invitation to dinner with the President of the United States
during his visit to America, saying "perhaps lunch instead.")
In this case, Dickens objected because he thought that his
daughters – who had not been introduced at court –
should not make their first appearance there as actresses.
He proposed that the Queen should come to a private performance
at the Gallery of Illustration a week before subscription
night, bringing her own gallery of guests. This Queen Victoria
agreed to do, but after the July 4 performance of both The
Frozen Deep and its following farce, Uncle John,
when she sent word backstage that he be presented to her,
Dickens refused again. His reason this time – "I
could not appear before Her Majesty tired and hot, with the
paint still upon my face."
Actually, it was more than grease paint. The romantic farce
of Uncle John, which – in the English theater
tradition that went back to Shakespeare – was offered
as immediate relief to the tragedy that had come before, a
sort of theatrical sorbet, left Dickens in his costume of
a floppy dressing gown, a silly wig, and a red nose. There
was no way on Earth that Charles Dickens, one of the proudest
and most status-conscious men who ever lived, was going to
be introduced to the Queen in that regalia.
"The Queen politely gave way."
Even though Wilkie Collins's and Dickens's play
had earned the vast majority of the money for the Jerrold
fund, it hadn't reached the £2,000 mark by the
end of the third and final performance, so Dickens finally
gave in to the suggestion of John Deane (manager of the Great
Manchester Art Exhibition) to perform at that city's
New Free Trade Hall.
Rushing up to Manchester to read A Christmas Carol
there, Dickens inspected the huge hall that could hold two
thousand people. It would work well for the staging of the
play, he knew, but it was much too large for his troupe of
amateur performers – including his sister-in-law Georgina
and children. They simply didn't have the voices or
proper stage training for such a venue. (It never occurred
to Dickens that he might not be up to the professional
requirements of such a huge hall.) He would need to hire and
rehearse some professional actresses. He was assisted in finding
these actresses by Alfred Wigan, manager of the Olympic Theater.
Wigan had already hired two promising young actresses at his
theater – Fanny and Maria Ternan – and with Dickens's
approval, he approached them to see if they would be interested
in appearing in The Frozen Deep. They agreed to do
Along with Fanny and Maria, Wigan suggested, Dickens might
consider the young women's mother, Frances Elearnor
Ternan, and the youngest member of the acting family –
just 18 – Ellen Lawless Ternan.
And thus Charles Dickens's life changed forever.
And here, with your kind permission, I shall segue from biographical
summary to a bit of my novel-in-progress. The narrator here,
I should remind you, is the rather mysterious and slightly
shadowy Wilkie Collins – writer, rake, laudanum addict,
frequent sufferer of drug-induced paranoia, and friend to
Charles Dickens during the older author's most rebellious
period. While everything Wilkie will tell you below is true
– or at least reported by various biographers, which
is far from the same thing as being "true" –
it needs to be remembered that one of the great pleasures
in this coming novel, for me, is that Wilkie Collins, because
of his own weaknesses (not the least of which include jealousy)
is what we call in this trade an unreliable narrator
in 1865, the year of his Staplehurst Disaster, Charles Dickens
had reason to be very satisfied indeed with his own personal
He was the most popular novelist
in England, perhaps in the world. Many people in England and
America considered my friend to be – outside of Shakespeare
and perhaps Chaucer and Keats – the greatest writer
who had ever lived.
Of course, I knew this to be
nonsense, but popularity, as they say (or as I have said),
breeds more popularity. I had seen Charles stuck in a rural,
doorless privy with no paper to wipe his arse and his trousers
down around his ankles, bleating like a lost sheep for some
help, and you will have to forgive me if that image remains
more true to me than "the greatest writer who ever lived."
But on this June day
in 1865, Dickens had many reasons to be smug.
Seven years earlier, the writer
had separated from his wife Catherine, who obviously had offended
him in their twenty-two years of marriage by uncomplainingly
bearing him ten children, suffering several miscarriages,
all the while generally putting up with his every complaint
and catering to his every whim. This endeared his wife to
him to the point that in 1857, during a walking trip we were
taking in the countryside during which we had sampled several
bottles of local wine, Dickens chose to describe his beloved
Catherine to me as, "Very dear to me, Wilkie, very
dear. But, on the whole, more bovine than entrancing, more
ponderous than feminine . . . an alchemist's dull brew
of vague-mindedness, constant incompetence, shuffling sluggishness,
and self-indulgent idleness, a thick gruel stirred only by
the paddle of her frequent self-pity."
doubt if my friend remembered telling me this, but I had not
Actually, it was a complaint
that did Catherine in, domestically speaking. It seems (actually,
it does not "seem" at all – I was there
when he purchased the blasted thing) that Dickens had bought
the actress Ellen Ternan an expensive bracelet after our production
of The Frozen Deep, and the idiot jeweler had delivered
the thing to the Dickenses' home in London, Tavistock
House, not to Miss Ternan's flat. As a result of this
mis-delivery,Catherine had given forth several weeks'
worth of bovine mewlings, refusing to believe that it was
merely her husband's token offering of innocent esteem
to the actress who had done such a wonderful (well, I would
say competent) job in our . . . no, my . . . play
about unrequited love in the Arctic.
It is true, as Dickens continued
to explain to his deeply hurt wife in 1858, that the author
had the habit of showering generous gifts on his fellow players
and participants in his various amateur theatricals. After
The Frozen Deep he had already distributed bracelets and pendants,
a watch, and one set of three shirt studs in blue enamel to
others in the production.
But, then, he wasn't in
love with these others. And he was in love with young Ellen
Ternan. I knew that. Catherine Dickens knew that. No one can
be sure if Charles Dickens knew that. The man was such a convincing
fictionalist, not to mention one of the most self-righteous
fellows ever to trod the Earth, that I doubt if he ever confronted
and acknowledged his own deeper motivations, except when they
were as pure as spring water.
In this case, it was
Dickens who flew into a rage, shouting and roaring at the
soon-cowed Catherine – I apologize for any inadvertant
bovine connotation there – that his wife's accusations
were a slur on the pure and luminously perfect person of Ellen
Ternan. Dickens's emotional, romantic, and, dare I say
it, erotic fantasies always revolved around sanctified, chivalric
devotion to some hypothetical young and innocent goddess whose
purity was eternally beyond reproach. But Dickens may have
forgotten that the hapless and now domestically doomed Catherine
had watched "Uncle John," the farce that we had
put on (it was the tradition in our century, you see, always
to present a farce along with a serious drama) after The Frozen
Deep. In "Uncle John," Dickens (age 46) played
the elderly gentleman and Ellen Ternan (18) played his ward.
Naturally, Uncle John falls madly in love with the girl less
than half his age. Catherine must have also known that while
I had written the bulk of the drama, The Frozen Deep,
about the search for the lost Franklin Expedition, it
was her husband who had written and cast the romantic farce,
after he had met Ellen Ternan.
Not only does Uncle John fall
in love with the young girl he should be protecting, but he
showers her with, and I quote from the play's stage
directions, "wonderful presents – a pearl necklace,
diamond ear-rings."
it is little wonder that when the expensive necklace, meant
for Ellen, showed up at Tavistock House, Catherine, between
pregnancies, roused herself from her vague-minded shuffling
sluggishness and bellowed like a milk cow with a Welsh dairyman's
prod between her withers.
Dickens responded as any guilty
husband would. But only if that husband happened to be the
most popular writer in all of England and the Americas and
perhaps the greatest writer who ever lived.
First, he insisted that Catherine
make a social call on Ellen Ternan and Ellen's mother,
showing everyone that there could be no hint of suspicion
or jealousy on his wife's part. In essence, Dickens
was demanding that his wife go publicly apologize to his mistress
– or at least to the woman that he would soon choose
to be his mistress when he worked up the courage
to make the arrangements. Weeping, miserable, Catherine did
as she was bid. She humiliated herself by making a social
call on Ellen and Mrs. Ternan.
It was not enough to
assuage Dickens's fury. He cast the mother of his ten
children out.
He sent Charley, his eldest
son, to live with Catherine. He kept the rest of the children
to live with him first at Travistock House and eventually
at Gad's Hill Place. (It was always my observation that
Dickens enjoyed his children until they began to think and
act for themselves in any way . . . in other words, when they
ceased behaving like Little Nell or one of his other fictional
constructs . . . and then he quickly grew very bored with
There was more to this scandal,
of course – protests by Catherine's parents, public
retractions of those protests forced by Dickens and his solicitors,
bullying and misleading public statements by the author, legal
maneuverings, much terrible publicity, and a final and irrevocable
legal separation forced on his wife. He eventually refused
to communicate with her at all, even about the well-being
of their children.
All this from the man who epitomized,
not just for England but for the world, the image of "the
happy home."
Of course Dickens still
needed a woman in his house. He had many servants. He had
nine children at home with whom he did not wish to be bothered
except when he was in the mood to play with them or dangle
them on his knee for photographs. He had social obligations.
There were menus and shopping lists and florists' orders
to prepare. There was much cleaning and organizing to oversee.
Charles Dickens needed to be freed from all these details.
He was the world's greatest writer.
Dickens did the obvious
thing, although it might not have seemed so obvious to you
or to me. (Perhaps in this distant 20th or 21st Century to
which I consign this memoir, it is the obvious thing. Or perhaps
you have, if you are smart, abandoned the quaint and idiotic
institution of marriage altogether. As you will see, I avoided
matrimony in my time, choosing to live with one woman while
having a child with another, and the populace, to my great
pleasure, called me a scoundrel and a cad. But I digress.)
Dickens did the obvious thing.
He elevated Catherine's spinster sister Georgina to
the role of surrogate wife, mistress of his household, discipline-mistress
of his children, hostess at his many parties and dinners,
not to mention Sergeant Major to the cook and servants.
When the inevitable
rumours began – centred on Georgina rather than on Ellen
Ternan, who had receded, one might say, from the gas lights
to the shadows – Dickens ordered a doctor to Tavistock
House. The doctor was told to examine Georgina and then was
ordered to publish a statement, which he did, declaring to
all and sundry that Miss Hogarth was virgo intacta.
And that, Charles Dickens assumed,
would be that.
His youngest daughter
would later say to me, or at least say within my hearing,
"My father was like a madman. This affair brought
out all that was the worst – all that was the weakest
in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us.
Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home."
If Dickens was aware of their
unhappiness, or if it mattered to him if he was indeed aware,
he did not show it. Not to me, nor to his newer and now closer
And he was correct in
his assumption that the crisis would pass without his readers
abandoning him. If they knew of his domestic irregularities
at all, they had obviously forgiven him. He was, after all,
the English prophet of the happy home and the world's
greatest writer. Allowances must be made.
Our male literary peers and
friends also forgave and forgot – with the exception
of Thackeray, but that is another story – and I must
admit that some of them, some of us, tacitly or privately,
applauded Charles's freeing himself of his domestic
obligations from such an unattractive and perpetually dragging
sea anchor. The break gave a glimmer of hope to the bleakest
of married men and amused us bachelors with the thought that
perhaps one could come back from that undiscovered
matrimonial country from which it has been said that no man
could ever return.
But, I pray you, Dear Reader,
remember that we are speaking of the man who, sometime earlier,
shortly before his acquaintance with Ellen Ternan, as he and
I cruised the theaters for what we called "the special
little periwinkles" – those very young and very
pretty young actresses we found to our mutual aesthetic satisfaction
– had said to me, "Wilkie, if you can think
of any tremendous way of passing the night, in the meantime,
do. I don't care what it is. I give, for this night
only, restraint to the Winds! If the mind can devise anything
sufficiently in the style of Sybarite Rome in the days of
its culminating voluptuousness, I am your man."
And I was his."
Your more reliable narrator (I hope) speaking again here.
We know that 46-year-old Charles Dickens pursued Ellen Ternan
even before the incident of the necklace (which has various
tellings and which may be apocryphal.) We know that he was
in the midst of some sort of major mid-life crisis centering
around his feelings toward the 18-year-old actress. We know
that Dickens enlisted Wilkie Collins in the charade of researching
a fictional travel piece called "The Lazy Tour of Two
Idle Apprentices" in order to pursue the Ternan women
to Doncaster where they were appearing in a play. We know
that Dickens wrote to Collins, "I have never known
a moment's peace or content since the last night of
The Frozen Deep."
In Doncaster (this is still 1858) something happened. We
don't know what. We are almost sure that he saw Ellen
alone there for the first time. Perhaps his affections were
rebuffed. Perhaps he was reminded of their age differences.
Perhaps young Ellen perceived something other than innocent
idolatry in Dickens's approaches. At any rate, in a
letter afterward he wrote, "The Doncaster unhappiness
remains so strong in me that I can't write, and (waking)
can't rest one minute."
For a man who had always been hyperactive and unable to relax
in one place for long, this was almost an understatement.
His coming months and years became an incessant cascade of
motion, moving, projects, professional reorganizing, readings,
travel, sleepless nights, laudanum, opium, and – of
course – turning his back forever on Catherine, his
wife of 22 years.
Our age sees clearly what a hypocritical male-chauvinist
pig-dog Charles Dickens was during that entire separation
(and in the scandal that accompanied it), but even our easy
modern analysis of such things needs to appreciate the complexities
of the time, the couple, and most of all, of the man named
Charles Dickens.
Novelist Jane Smiley, in her short and fascinating Charles
Dickens 2002 contribution to the Penguin LIVES editions,
writes –
"We also see a pattern in his behavior that is
more familiar in our divorce culture than it was in Dickens's
time – a man filled with conflicting passions, resentments,
and needs transfers his allegiance from one object to another.
The situation with the new woman requires him to suppress
his demands or resentments with her in order to court her,
so he displaces his anger onto the former object, changing
entirely from the protective, considerate husband he had once
been into a thoughtless tyrant, completely unable to dissemble,
as he had been doing when the probable continuation of the
marriage required it. More and more anger requires more and
more self-justification, until the man literally comes to
seem either 'mad' or 'wicked,' which
is what Dickens seemed to his daughters . . . .
is also true that the evidence of Dickens's vast canvas
of characters, which includes Uriah Heep as well as David
Copperfield, and Rigaud as well as Arthur Clennam, and Carker
the manager and Joey Bagstock and the dwarf Quilp as well
as John Jarndyce and Nicholas Nickleby and Sam Weller, indicates
that Dickens was entirely at ease imagining anger, manipulation,
and evil. Whatever the inspiration for any character, each
receives life from the author's empathetic imagination,
which is quickened through its sense of kinship with the idiosyncrasies
of the character. Dickens's evil characters are often
remarkable and riveting in their energy. They show that the
powerful anger and longing Dickens expressed at the time of
his divorce [(sic) – legally it was not a divorce
but a separation: DS] were not at all unknown or unfamiliar
to him. Their eruption into his normally well-conducted life
was possibly to be deplored, but also to be expected. Some
of his contemporary authors were horrified at how he was behaving
and did not themselves behave with a similar lack of control
or degree of passion, but neither do their works explore the
negative passions so deeply or so repeatedly. Once again,
Dickens did not fit in and showed himself both freer and broader
in his passions than those around him. But it is this very
freedom and breadth that causes us to mention Dickens and
not, say, Thackeray or Eliot, along with Shakespeare."
Dickens may have been "freer and broader in his passions"
than his Victorian contemporaries, but he was also far more
secretive. The cliché of the era among men of means
was the upright family man with his long-term mistress on
the side, known by all (including, often silently, by the
wife), but for various reasons – Dickens's truly
unprecedented fame (he was the first celebrity, by modern
standards), his association with the image of the happy English
family that he had created through his early novels, and his
complex personality – Dickens could not and would not
go that route.
Many modern readers know that as a boy, Dickens suffered
a serious trauma that changed his personality, determined
his behavior, and formed his writing for the rest of his life.
At the age of eleven, due to his parents' reckless dealings
with money, the happily middle-class young Charles Dickens
was jerked out of school and set to work in a blacking factory
– filling bottles with shoe-blacking solution. It was
demeaning work, set in a slum, and Dickens was suddenly set
to work amidst young ruffians and uneducated youths whose
future in the underclass was all but determined for life.
Dickens himself was set into a window where his job was to
paste on labels and then tie a string with a clever knot around
the label and bottle. The boys doing this were exhibited in
the window because the owners of the shop knew that passersby
would be amused by the waifs' rapid work and manual
While Dickens was to become the defender of childhood for
the rest of his life – not just through his powerful
novels but through his charity work and support of Reform
bills that attempted to give some dignity to the young and
poor – what had truly scarred him during these nightmarish
months in the blacking factory was being exhibited in
the window for everyone to gawk at and to laugh at.
Never again.
1861 onward, Dickens lived two lives. Pruning his life of
the close friends who had not supported him during his dastardly
separation from Catherine and the scandal that he had helped
create around it (assuming that everyone knew what was going
on, he published strident and self-justifying letters and
announcements that left the majority of his readers –
who knew little or nothing about Dickens's domestic
problems – wondering if he had lost his mind or if he
was simply a cad), Dickens continued to live one very visible
public and private life – with Georgina Hogarth (Catherine's
sister) and his nine children at Gad's Hill Place –
and another secret, sacred, hidden life that no one knows
about to this day.
He continued to see Ellen Ternan – leasing a nearby
cottage for her under an assumed name, meeting her privately
in France and elsewhere, even sending her coded messages as
to whether it would be politic for her to join him on his
second (and more triumphant) visit to America (he quickly
realized that the uptight Americans would be scandalized and
the coded message told Ellen not to come) – and we know
through hints in his fiction and letters to his most intimate
friends that the relationship evolved and changed in various
ways, most biographers believing they became lovers and Ellen
Ternan's single biographer and one of Dickens's
own children stating flatly that she had a child of his who
From 1857 until his death in 1870 at age 58, there were two
Charles Dickens – one the famous and much-loved superstar
of a novelist, whose public readings packed in thousands in
both England and America and which created an entire new form
of performance art – and the other a man pursuing the
romantic and perhaps erotic dream of his entire lifetime:
one that involved finding the true life's companion
whom he had never had as well as sharing innocence, intelligence,
compassion, and – perhaps – passion on a level
that he had never found it.
This secret life and secret arrangement might have continued
implacably on for decades if it had not been for the Staplehurst
accident on the ninth of June, 1865.
I will return you to our narrator of my fictionalized Wilkie
Collins –
have not forgotten 9 June, 1865, the true beginning of this
cascade of incredible events.
Dickens, explaining to friends
that he was suffering from overwork and what he had been calling
his "frost-bitten foot" since mid-winter, had
taken a week off from his work of finishing Our Mutual
Friend to enjoy a holiday in Paris. I do not know if
Ellen Ternan and her mother went with him. I do know they
returned with him.
A lady whom I have never met
nor much wish to, a certain Mrs. William Clara Pitt Byrne
(a friend, I am told, of Charles Waterton – the naturalist
and explorer who reported his bold adventures all over the
world but who had died from a silly fall at his estate of
Walton Hall just eleven days before the Staplehurst accident,
his ghost later reported to be haunting the place in the form
of a great, grey heron), loved to send little bits of malicious
gossip to the Times. This malevolent morsel, reporting
the sighting of our friend on the ferry from Boulogne to Folkestone
that day of the ninth of June, appeared some months after
Dickens's accident:
"Travelling with him
was a lady not his wife, nor his sister-in-law, yet he strutted
about the deck with the air of a man bristling with self-importance,
every line of his face and every gesture of his limbs seemed
haughtily to say – 'Look at me; make the most
of your chance. I am the great, I am the only Charles Dickens;
whatever I may choose to do is justified by that fact."
I am told that Mrs. Byrne
is known primarily for a book she published some years ago
titled Flemish Interiors. In my modest opinion, she
should have reserved her vitriolic pen for scribbling about
divans and wallpaper. Human beings are clearly beyond her
narrow scope.
disembarking at Folkestone, Dickens, Ellen, and Mrs. Ternan
took the 2.38 tidal train to London. As they approached Staplehurst,
they were the only passengers in their coach, one of seven
first-class carriages in the tidal train that day.
The engineer was going full
speed – about fifty miles per hour – as they passed
Headcorn at eleven minutes after three in the afternoon. They
were now approaching the railroad viaduct near Staplehurst,
although "viaduct" – the name given the
structure in the official railways guide – is too fancy
a word for the web of girders supporting the heavy wood beams
spanning the shallow river Beult.
Labourers were carrying out
a routine replacement of old timbers on that span. Later investigation
– and I have read the reports – showed that the
foreman had consulted the wrong timetable and did not expect
the tidal train for another two hours. (It seems that we travelers
are not the only ones to be confounded by British railway
timetables with their infinite holiday and weekend asterisks
and confounding parentheses.)
A flagman was required by railway
policy and English law to be stationed 1,000 yards up the
rails from such work – two of the rails had already
been lifted off at the bridge and set alongside the track
– but for some reason this man with his red flag was
only 550 yards from the gap. This did not give a train traveling
at the speed of the Folkestone-London tidal express any chance
of stopping in time.
The engineer, upon seeing the
red flag so tardily waved and – a much more soul-riveting
sight, I am sure – upon seeing the gap in rails and
beams in the bridge ahead, did his best. Perhaps in your day,
Dear Reader, all trains have brakes that can be applied by
the engineer. Not so in our day of 1865. Each carriage must
be braked individually and then only upon the instructions
from the engineer. He madly whistled for the guards along
the length of the train to apply their brakes. It did little
According to the report, the
train was still doing almost thirty miles per hour when it
reached the broken line. Incredibly, the engine jumped
the forty-two foot gap and leaped off the track on the other
side of the chasm. Of the seven first-class carriages, all
but one flew free and plummeted to their destruction in the
swampy river bed below.
The surviving coach was the
one carrying Dickens, his mistress, and her mother.
The guards' van immediately
behind the engine was flung to the other track, dragging the
next coach – a second-class carriage – with it.
Immediately behind this second-class carriage was Dickens's
coach and it jolted partially over the bridge as the other
six first-class carriages flew by and crashed below. Dickens's
carriage finally ended up dangling over the side of the bridge,
now being kept from falling only by its single coupling to
the second-class carriage. Only the very rear of the rest
of the train remained on the rails. The other first-class
carriages had plummeted and crashed and rolled and buckled
and generally been smashed to matchwood and splinters on the
marshy ground below."
And there, as they say, doth begin my tale.
^top | more


text:
FFT's Young Player of the Year award: who should really be able to win it
What if the PFA's ruling on youngsters was tweaked? Jonathan Fadugba reels off the only kids who should have stood a chance winning the prize this season...
If we're being honest, Eden Hazard being up for the Young Player of the Year award again this season just isn't quite right. The brilliant Belgian turned 24 in January and is now in his seventh season of regular top-flight football. But them's the rules: all you have to be is 23 or under at the start of the season.
FFT reckons it'd be a little fairer to tweak things slightly. According to Rule 2.2 of the Premier League's Youth Development handbook, under-21 players – generally a widely accepted age for a 'youngster' – "must be under the age of 21 as at 1 January in the year in which the season concerned commences". For season 2014/15 that's a birthday of January 1, 1993 or later.
So here are our nominees...
Romelu Lukaku (May 13, 1993)
Lukaku has had a hand in 12 Premier League goals for Everton this season, more than any other player. He has 18 in all competitions, including 11 since the turn of the year.
Lukaku has packed a lot into his short career so far, to the extent that he's almost become passé – an outmoded character in a game rampantly churning through players in search of The Next Big Thing. "I think people forget I'm still 21," the Everton striker commented earlier this season, and he's right. Lukaku is only two months older than Harry Kane, for example, but while Kane experiences his virgin top-flight full season, Lukaku's been doing it for years. It's not been a vintage year for the talented Belgian hitman, but eight goals and four assists aren't to be sniffed at in what's been a season of underachievement at Goodison Park.
Ayoze Perez (July 23, 1993)
Three of Perez's five league goals for Newcastle this season have been the winning goal for the Mapgies.
One of the shining lights in a dismal season for Newcastle, Perez lacks the requisite numbers to ever have a chance of topping this list, if we're honest. But if there's a case to be made for the man from Tenerife, it's surely based on the Spaniard's eyebrow-raising potential. Perez cost the Magpies just €2 million last summer, but his delicious touch and technique hint at a player already worth much more. That Manchester City are rumoured to be sniffing around is testament to Ayoze's impact in his debut Premier League season. Five goals in 31 appearances only tell half the story.
Harry Kane (July 28, 1993)
Kane needs one goal to become only the eighth Englishman to score 30+ goals in a season (all competitions) in the Premier League era.
Oh, Harry. Show us a football fan who hasn't spent at least part of this season swooning at the Spurs hero's extraordinary breakout campaign and we'll either show you an Arsenal fan or someone stone cold dead inside. Or both. By now, Kane's rise is familiar to most, if not all. The goals, the glory, more goals, the England debut, the England debut goal inside 80 seconds: this has been Kane's season more than any other player in the Premier League.
Saido Berahino (August 4, 1993)
Only Kane (17) has scored more goals at home in all competitions than Berahino (15) in the Premier League this season.
From a distance it's been hard to decipher at times this season whether the plinth Berahino has been standing on is a podium or the naughty step. The Burundi-born striker has balanced match-winning goals and thrilling performances with court cases, off-field problems and a perceived moodiness that appears to have alienated at least some West Bromwich Albion supporters. Still, 12 goals in a team that's only scored 30 all season can't be overlooked. The 21-year-old looks to have a natural instinct for goal and no lack of self-confidence either.
John Stones (May 28, 1994)
Everton have conceded an average of 1.1 goals per game when Stones has played this season, compared to 1.6 per game without him in the side.
Meeting Stones, as FourFourTwo did this week, the first thing that strikes you is the sense of purpose and drive the 20-year-old has about his own career. The former Barnsley star is keen to learn and grow in his new environment, and this enthusiasm, accompanied with a large dollop of talent, helps explain why Evertonians are so excited by their young centre-back. Injuries have curtailed Stones's progress at Goodison Park this season, but when he's played the England international has shown why he's considered the long-term answer to the Toffees' defensive woes.
James Ward-Prowse (November 1, 1994)
Ward-Prowse has assisted six goals in 20 Premier League appearances this season – he'd only assisted two in 49 games before 2014/15.
"A big weight off my shoulders" is how the 20-year-old described his first ever league goal for Southampton in April against Hull. The wait for 'Prowsey's first Premier League goal had become something of a burden for the midfielder, but with six assists in a season hampered by injury, the baby-faced England Under-21 international is developing into a thoroughly decent player. He takes a mean set-piece, too.
Nabil Bentaleb (November 24, 1994)
Bentaleb has made more interceptions than any other Spurs midfielder in the top flight this season (44), despite playing just 1658 of a possible 2880 mins.
While Kane has hoovered up all the headlines at Tottenham this season, Bentaleb has been if not equally important, then close to it. Another youngster at White Hart Lane who credits a certain Mr T. Sherwood for his emergence at first-team level, Bentaleb has become central to Mauricio Pochettino's plans, diligently scurrying away in midfield breaking up play and keeping things ticking along for the Lilywhites.
Raheem Sterling (December 8, 1994)
It took Brendan Rodgers about a month of the season to learn his first big lesson: if you want a team built on high-pressing and intense hustle, don't spunk £16m on Mario Balotelli.
Lesson number two? If you want to leverage your bargaining position in a contract negotiation, don't describe the asset you're trying to low-ball – in this case Sterling – as "the best young player in Europe".
Sterling has beaten an opponent with a dribble 93 times this season; more often than any other English player in the Premier League.
Little wonder the youngster's agent had pound signs in his eyes given such resounding praise for his client, and Sterling's numbers this season – an average of a goal or assist every other Premier League game – again prove his worth.
Star of Snapchat, lover of jazz balloons and still one of the league's best youngsters.
Sorry guys but this one's a no-contest: it has to be Harry.


text:
Ibiza: Britain's Balearic Soul
4 Extra Debut. Kate O'Brien explores Ibiza's influence over British youth culture and nightlife, and the rise of the Superstar DJ. From August 2011.
The island of Ibiza has subtly influenced British youth culture and the nation's night-time economy for more than 20 years.
The Balearic attitude to nightlife and entertainment was first adopted in Britain during the late 80s and soon many young Brits would no longer be divided by class, race, football allegiances or even sexuality, instead becoming united by their devotion to house music, recreational drug taking and warehouse parties or raves.
By the mid-90s, millions of ordinary young people spent their weekends 'dancing on drugs' and, as alcohol sales dropped and customers fell away, the licensed leisure industry replaced so-called spit 'n' sawdust pubs with more modern bars while bottled beers and alcopops became the new drinks of choice. With Radio 1 broadcasting live from the world's house music clubs, dance music culture moved into the mainstream and has stayed there ever since.
In 'Ibiza: Britain's Balearic Soul' Dr Kate O'Brien meets those at the heart of these changes. Internationally celebrated DJ Paul Oakenfield shares with Kate his first experience in Ibiza and how he tried to recreate the island's bohemian, hedonistic party scene, while Radio 1's Pete Tong explains how he pushed the station into being part of this unrelenting youth movement.
Kate also hears from a former Chief Constable on his struggle to manage 40,000 party-goers at an all-night rave, and experts on alcohol and drug consumption tell how society and government reacted to the 'normalisation' of recreational drug taking and young people's determined move away from the limitations of licensed premises over two decades.
The history of British dance culture and clubbing is complex and fascinating, and Kate explores its impact on young people's identities and lifestyles since the late 1980s
Producer: Russell Crewe
A Made in Manchester Production for BBC Radio 4.
- Sat 27 Aug 2011 10:30
- Fri 2 Sep 2016 06:30
- Fri 2 Sep 2016 13:30
- Fri 2 Sep 2016 20:30


text:
Isabel de Madariaga. Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Collected Essays. London and New York: Longman, 1998. viii + 304 pp. $36.00 (textbook), ISBN 978-0-582-32255-4; $105.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-582-32256-1.
Reviewed by Max J. Okenfuss (Washington University, St. Louis)
Published on H-Russia (December, 1998)
The "Collected Essays" of senior scholars make up a marvellous genre. Even when a volume contains no major surprises, with no occasional writings obscurely published and formerly unappreciated, it is heartening to have them in one convenient volume, with index. This collection, in fact, contains one reworked version of a previously unpublished lecture from 1984.
The collection at hand is somewhat artificially arranged into three general sections, "Russian Government and Society," "Social and Administrative Problems," and "Catherine II, Russian Society, and the World of Ideas." There is, in fact, more unity than division here. De Madariaga is inescapably Catherine the Great's biographer (Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great [Yale, 1981], Catherine the Great: A Short History [Yale, 1990]). She is also her ardent defender. As Tony Lentin pointed out in "History Today" (December 1966), "seventy years of neglect and dismissal in the Soviet period as a foreign adventuress, hypocrite and poseur" fairly demanded that someone defend her.
Most of the essays gathered here, originally written between 1974 and 1998, defend some aspect of Catherine's personality, her mind, or her policies. Even in the initial four, which appear tangential, concrete connections are apparent. "Tsar into Emperor: The Title of Peter the Great" (1997), for example, explores Peter's intention to become "the heir of the Orthodox empire of Byzantium." This strongly suggests that Catherine's "Greek Project" was not an isolated event. Likewise, her study of the political library of the verkhovnik of 1730 fame, D. M. Golitsyn (1984), has at its core the idea of establishing a legal aristocracy limiting the power of the monarchy, a crucial issue which Catherine addressed seriously in the 1760s and in her great charters of the 1780s. The exploration printed here represented fundamental groundwork for the biography, just as more recent essays explore related topics raised by her work and reviews of it.
At the heart of the volume, however, stands de Madariaga's defence of Catherine's reputation in the quicksilver Enlightenment(s). The prevalence of this theme is so ubiquitous that the organization of the book is a bit misleading. The second section, "Social and Administrative Problems," describes the content, but scarcely reflects the purpose of the essays. In one way or another all five essays--"The...Origins of Russian Civil Rights" (1998), "Penal Policy in the Age of Catherine II" (1990), "Catherine II and the Serfs" (1974), "Freemasonry"(1994), and "Catherine and... the Russian Educational System" (1979)--attempt to refute numerous nineteenth-century critics of Catherine, and of the Enlightenment generally. Professor de Madariaga marshalls new evidence, contemporary appreciations, insightful European comparisons, even to demonstrate Catherine's good intentions and humane policies. Thus when the volume formally turns to Enlightened Russia in the final five essays, it is almost anticlimactic. If one single point emerges clearly here, it is that the Enlightenment was not a single uniform phenomenon. Critics of Catherine, de Madariaga subtly and convincingly shows, selectively defined it to her discredit, and it is her task to show its complexity and to show the congruence of Catherine with its leading lights.
Inevitably infelicities creep into a collection of essays originally published over a quarter century. Written today, "Catherine and the Philosophes" (1981) would surely not inveigh against Peter Gay (1959!) as its straw-man. Written today, the bibliographic survey in David Ransel's 1975 work on the Panin Party would probably not be cited for "recent trends" in scholarship (p. 76). Footnotes in this collection which cite the original location of de Madariaga's own previous publications might send the incautious reader scurrying to the library for articles already at hand.
The one previously unpublished essay is not the strongest. "Russia and the Enlightenment" perpetuates, one fleeting reference to the Synodal press notwithstanding, the carefully crafted Soviet myths of a significant secular printing enterprise and of a significant secular reading public, embodied in the falsehoods of the Svodnyi katalog russkikh knig. Nonetheless, the older scholarship, the more recent, and the new integrating introductory essay reveal de Madariaga's style as urbane, witty, feisty, and combative.
Conceptually, these essays appear dated in a more serious manner. De Madariaga was trained, and pursued "her" Catherine, long before the advent and flowering of contemporary feminist historical perspectives. This is, of course, just as it should be. Thus, it could never have ocurred to her, as Dena Goodman has recently suggested in The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Cornell, 1994), that in the Enlightenment women spoke with a different voice than men, employed different media, and led different cultural institutions. All of this has arguably been ignored or denigrated by (male) historians for the two hundred years since Rousseau, but it has recently been resurrected. Judged by these recent standards, de Madariaga's Catherine is still being measured to a man's suit of clothing.
Recent feminist historiography provides the insights that would put her back into, if not a dress, then into conversation, salon, and correspendence--that is, "epistolary commerce" (p. 140), the genres in which women philosophes not only excelled but which they pioneered. It is in this newer literature, not in de Madariaga, that one encounters the remarkable observation by Suzanne Necker that Catherine "never had a taste for pleasure, and this characteristic was one of the causes of her greatness; it is the taste for pleasure which undermines the consideration for all women" (p. 82). Remarkable new insight is gained when Catherine's stature is assessed not by the male standards of the philosophes, but by those of the salonnieres. Thus the capstone essay from 1992, "The Role of Catherine in the Literary and Cultural Life of Russia," is less impressive than it might be.
Again, this is no criticism of de Madariaga. It highlights the fact that "her" Catherine, embodied in biography and in the present essays, have, with other more recent biographies and monographic studies, become the indespensable building blocks for the ever-changing explorations of new generations of historians. Any Russia historian's library or reading list requires that these collected essays stand next to her major works.
Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-russia.
Max J. Okenfuss. Review of de Madariaga, Isabel, Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Collected Essays.
H-Russia, H-Net Reviews.
December, 1998.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2555
Copyright © 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at email@example.com.


text:
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