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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 00:00:28 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
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Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 4 Jul 2002 to 5 Jul 2002 (#2002-185)
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
There are 8 messages totalling 272 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Robert Ross on Oscar Wilde (3)
2. metropolitan police - detectives/uniform
3. Nurses and public schools (for info)
4. Wilde and Plotinus
5. Metropolitan police - detective uniform
6. correction
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 17:16:45 +0930
From: Angela Kingston <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Robert Ross on Oscar Wilde
Dear list members,
After reading Robert Ross's introduction to Ada Leverson's _Letters to the
Sphinx from Oscar Wilde_ (1930), I have two queries:
On page 15, Ross compares the diverse impressions Wilde made on his peers to
'the fable of a gold and silver shield [in which] everyone received entirely
different impressions according to the method of their approach and the
accident of acquaintance'. Can anyone point me in the right direction for a
version of this fable?
On the same page, Ross says Wilde exerted an extraordinary magnetism 'at
least on the needles, if not the silver churns, of life'. Does any list
member know if this refers to a particular phrase or story?
I'd be grateful for any thoughts - please reply directly to
[log in to unmask]
Angela Kingston
Department of English
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005
Website: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/English/pgrad/a_k.htm
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' Oscar
Wilde
'The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of
books.' Longfellow
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 09:49:42 +0100
From: K Eldron <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: metropolitan police - detectives/uniform
Another Dickens detective is Inspector Field, who appears in an 1851 number
of Household Words (sorry, I don't have the exact reference) in On Duty with
Inspector Field. Although there isn't a positive reference to how he's
dressed, one sentence suggests that he and his sergeant are in plain
clothes:
"He, Inspector Field, is an Inspector of the Detective Police, Detective
Sergeant is Detective Sergeant, Black and Green are constables in uniform."
There is certainly an illustration of Field in plain clothes being
'confronted with an unexpected clue' (in a more exciting manner than most
detectives are confronted with clues).
Could the 'A' division inspectors in uniform be from what Dickens refers to
as the 'Metropolian Protectives' ie, the 'ordinary' policemen as opposed to
detectives?. Alternatively, all inspectors may have been required to wear
a uniform on formal occasions.
K Eldron
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 14:57:39 GMT
From: Lesley Hall <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Nurses and public schools (for info)
There are two extremely interesting articles on early
(pre-Nightingale) C19th nursing and its reform in the
current issue of _Medical History_ (46/3 Jul 2002):
Carol Helmstadter 'Early Nursing Reform in Nineteenth-
Century London: A Doctor-Driven Phenomenon'
and
RG Huntsman, Mary Bruin, and Deborah Holttum 'Twixt
Candle and Lamp: The contribution of Elizabeth Fry and
the Institution of Nursing Sisters to Nursing Reform'
On an entirely different subject, I notice that
forthcoming from Thoemmes Press is the following:
'Victorian Novels of Public School Life
With a new introduction by Christopher Stray,
University of Wales, Swansea
Includes a wide range of novels, originally published
between 1861 and 1896,
depicting various aspects of life in the British
public school.
www.thoemmes.com/19cphil/novels.htm
The works included are
Henry Cadwallader Adams, Schoolboy Honour. A Tale of
Halminster College (1861)
Frederic William Farrar, St Winifred’s, or the World
of School (1862)
Talbot Baines Reed, The Fifth Form at St Dominics
(1887)
Arthur Herman Gilkes, The Thing That Hath Been (1894)
James Edward Cowell Welldon, Gerald Eversley’s
Friendship, a Study in Real Life (1896)
Lesley Hall
[log in to unmask]
website:
http://www.lesleyahall.net
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 11:10:07 -0400
From: Suzy Anger <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Wilde and Plotinus
Wilde's narrator mentions Plotinus at the end of section two of
"The Portrait of Mr. W.H." and also refers to Pater's writing on Plotinus:
"Plotinus, that new Plato, in whom, as Mr. Pater reminds us, 'the mystical
element in the Platonic philosophy has been worked out to the utmost limit
of vision and ecstasy'."
Suzy Anger
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 11:17:32 -0400
From: Herbert Tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Robert Ross on Oscar Wilde
This doesn't answer the question, exactly, but the same "fable" appears in
the long 5th paragraph of Robert Browning's 1852 Essay on Shelley: "the
perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side set up for all comers to
challenge" figures the copresence, in theory, of objective and subjective
genius in a poet (a perfected combination not yet realized in any known
poet, the still largely unknown Browning murmurs, with some clearing of the
throat?).
>On page 15, Ross compares the diverse impressions Wilde made on his peers to
>'the fable of a gold and silver shield [in which] everyone received entirely
>different impressions according to the method of their approach and the
>accident of acquaintance'. Can anyone point me in the right direction for a
>version of this fable?
Herbert Tucker
Department of English
219 Bryan Hall
University of Virginia 22904-4121
[log in to unmask]
434 / 924-6677
FAX: 434 / 924-1478
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 19:41:50 +0100
From: Robert Ward <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Metropolitan police - detective uniform
Douglas Browne in "The Rise of Scotland Yard" (1956) says that uniforms were
worn by all ranks : "For constables and sergeants uniforms were an issue;
superintendents and inspectors had to buy their own, which at first bore no
badges of rank on the collar." Police working on detective style operations
(such as surveillance at political meetings) wore plain clothes. A
specialised "detective office" was formed in 1842, whose members bormally wore
plain clothes, though presumably they would wear uniform on formal or
ceremonial occasions.
The Criminal Investigation Department was formally established in 1878; its
members were distinct from and paid more than uniformed police.
RW
Subject: metropolitan police - detectives/uniform
From: Lee Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 08:57:00 +0100
Can anyone help? I need to find out whether Inspectors at both division
level, and the Scotland Yard detective branch, were obliged to wear uniform
in the 1850s/60s. Joan Lock's excellent "Dreadful deeds and awful murders"
is the best source I have, which shows an illustration of Inspector Bucket
in ordinary dress, which is what I expected, but also a formal photo of
inspectors from 'A' division on duty at Epsom, all of them in uniform. Did
division inspectors wear uniform as a matter of course, or only if they were
being photographed/on show? What about Scotland Yard?
I had thought of emailing the Met. but their website didn't seem to overly
encourage this sort of enquiry! Any thoughts appreciated.
Lee
www.victorianlondon.org
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 21:38:10 -0700
From: "Margot K. Louis" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Robert Ross on Oscar Wilde
>On the same page, Ross says Wilde exerted an extraordinary magnetism 'at
least on the needles, if not the silver churns, of life'. Does any list
member know if this refers to a particular phrase or story?
In Gilber & Sullivan's _Patience_, Grosvenor in Act II sings a song
about a magnet who exerted a strange fascination on all the needles (who
promptly fell in love with him), but he couldn't attract the silver churn
with which he (the magnet) was in love.
Margot K. Louis
[log in to unmask]
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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 21:52:22 -0700
From: "Margot K. Louis" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: correction
Oops, sorry--of course that's Gilbert & Sullivan, not Gilber! In
_Patience_, BTW, Grosvenor, is the "Idyllic" rival of the "Fleshly" poet
Bunthorne who is partially modelled on Wilde (and also on Swinburne and
Whistler). His song about the magnet and the churn reflects Grosvenor's
own situation; all the ladies in the comic opera are now in love with him,
but Patience is the one he loves and also the one he can't get--
While this magnetic,
Peripatetic
Lover he lived to learn
By no endeavour
Can magnet ever
Attract a silver churn!
Exactly how Ross meant this to apply to Wilde I'm not quite sure...
Margot K. Louis
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 4 Jul 2002 to 5 Jul 2002 (#2002-185)
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