Books: News Album

NEWS FROM THE PAST—edited & compiled by Yvonne ffrench—Viking ($2.75).

News lives vividly for a day, fades quickly into staleness, fossilizes eventually into history. But most of it is simply forgotten: it lies abandoned in old newspaper files like heaps of dried lavender. Gradually, with the passage of years, its mustiness changes to a delicate old-fashioned odor. Editor ffrench,* a rummager rather than a historian, followed her nose through dusty English newspaper files (1805-87), pasted her miscellaneous finds into this 650-page album, calls it “the autobiography of the 19th Century.” Erudite historians may find nothing startling in News from the Past, but 20th Century readers, if they have not lost their sense of smell, will sniff its pages with delight.

1805.—The London Times, reporting the news of Trafalgar: “There was not a man who did not think that the life of the Hero of the Nile was too great a price for the capture and destruction of twenty sail of French and Spanish men of war. No ebullitions of popular transport, no demonstrations of public joy, marked this great and important event.”

1806.—A Mrs. Bennet accompanied the inventor of a diving machine under water, remained there 40 minutes, “was greeted on her ascent by the cheering plaudits of a very numerous concourse of people. Mrs. Bennet is now generally known as the diving belle.”

1808.—”The Prince of WALES’S morning-dress is either a chestnut-brown, or a bottle-green cloth coat, with a fancy-stripe waistcoat, and light stone-colour musquito pantaloons. The coat is made short in the waist and the skirts, without pockets or flaps, with a silk or covered button of the same colour; the cape or collar is made to sit close around the neck, with a becoming fall in front, which shows a small portion only of the waistcoat. The lower part of the lappel is not cut in the usual vulgar manner, but forms an elegant slope, the outline of which was FURNISHED BY THE PRINCE HIMSELF. No part of the waistcoat is to be seen beneath the lappel. No silk facings to the coat, nor slashed sleeves. Shoes and strings.”

1822.—”It is estimated that more than a million of bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported last year from the continent of Europe into the port of Hull. The neighbourhood of Leipsic, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and of all the places where, during the late bloody war, the principal battles were fought, have been swept alike of the bones of the hero and of the horse which he rode . . . thence forwarded to the Yorkshire bone grinders . . . sold to the farmers to manure their lands.”

1823.—”It is said, that Mr. M’Adam’s [father of macadamizing] plan for converting the paved streets of the metropolis into roadways, will be tried in St. James’s-square and on Westminster-bridge.”

1844.—”On Monday evening an inquest was held … as to the death of Miss Elizabeth Allen, aged 22, a pupil of Madame Devey . . . the fashionable milliner. . . . [The doctor] had measured her corset, which was 1 foot 11 inches round, and on her body it would not meet in the smallest part by 2 inches. He was not aware if that was the usual way they were made, but if so, it was certainly too much contracted. The jury returned a verdict of ‘Died by the visitation of God.’ ”

1846.—”The last of the coaches running from this town [in Essex] to the metropolis, driven for the last sixteen or seventeen years by George Bird, than whom a more obliging and respected coachman never sat upon a box, has struck its colours to ‘all potent steam.'”

1849.—”Amongst the miscellaneous proceedings of the United States Congress are projects to establish a telegraphic communication across the Atlantic to Europe, to form a similar line across the American continent, and also a project to form a line of railway from the Lakes of Michigan to the Pacific.”

1850.—As Queen Victoria was leaving her uncle’s house “a person respectably dressed, and about six feet two inches high, advanced two or three paces, and with a small black cane, which he held in his hand, struck a sharp blow at the Queen. The blow took effect upon the upper part of her Majesty’s forehead, and upon her bonnet, which being of a light texture was driven in by its force.” (In 1882 the Times reported “the seventh occasion on which HER MAJESTY has been exposed to danger or outrage by the act of one of her subjects.”)

1855.—”Mrs. H. B. Stowe has received from her publishers, Messrs. Jewett and Co., of Boston, the sum of $10,000, this being her second payment as copyright on ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ making upwards of $20,000 received by her in nine months.”

1868.—”The regulation of the street traffic of the metropolis . . . seems likely now to receive an important auxiliary . . . a column 20 feet high, with a spacious gaslamp near the top. . . . The lamp will usually present to view a green light, which will serve to foot passengers by way of caution, and at the same time remind drivers of vehicles and equestrians that they ought at this point to slacken their speed. The effect of substituting a red light for the green one and of raising the arms of the semaphore—a simultaneous operation —will be to arrest the traffic on each side.”

1878.—U. S. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell exhibited his telephone to Queen Victoria. “Her Majesty conversed with Sir Thomas and Lady Biddulph, and later Miss Kate Field, who was at Osborne-cottage, sang ‘Kathleen Mavourneen,’ for which Her Majesty returned gracious thanks telephonically through the Duke of Connaught.”

*Editor ffrench’s compromise with the Welsh double F.