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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1957-10-31, Page 2Foiled Rival's Kidnap Plot It was an April night in 1768. The King's Theatre in the Hay- market, London, was ,packed with rank and fashion. It was a Saturday night, the favourite evening for going to a show. Queen Charlotte sat in the royal bor and was gazed at by the adoring ladies in hooped pet- ticoats who sat uncomfortably in the pit stalls. In the stalls there were two vacant' seats. Just be- fore the curtain rose on the first act of the opera, two people moved into those seats. The au- dience gasped; the women oohed and ached; the men put up their quizzing glasses. For the man now waiting for his companion to ,be seated was the Duke of Grafton, Prime Minister of Eng- land and the woman with term was Nancy Parsons, known as Mrs. Houghton. But what caused the sensation was that a few seats away was the Duchess of Grafton, still married to the Prime Minister, but separated from him for the past four years. Gossip had it that the reason the ducal couple separated was that the Duchess was a great gambler, a pursuit that the Duke hated, although he often fre- quented the racecourses himself and was a keen ridedr to hounds. But who was Nancy Parsons and how did she come into the pic- ture? In the private collection of Mr. Charles Wertheimer is a portrait of Nancy painted by Thomas Gainsborough. It shows her to have been an excedingly beau- tiful girl in her late twenties, a girl of aristocratic appearance, but she certainly was not of aris- tocratic birth. So far as her origin is known, she was the daughter of a Bond Street tailor. According to report, her father gave her a good edu- cation, including a finishing course in France, but even that is not certain. The gossips of the day had it that she was already a friend of the Prime Minister before she went to France and that actually she had gone there after a quar- rel with him, that he had sent one of his party to France to bring her back, and she had re- turned in one of the royal yachts. True or false, it is impossible to say. Nancy was a strange young woman, known to be highly in- telligent and a pious churchgoer, but how did she become Mrs. Houghton? It appears that she had no legal right to call herself Mrs. Hough- ton; she had met Captain Hough- ton in London and he had en- ticed her to accompany him to the West Indies, where he treat- ed her badly forcing her to run away and return to London ab- solutely penniless. Her enemies, of whom she had plenty, claimed that she became a lady of the town. However, it is known that when the Duke of Grafton was negotiating terms of separation from his Duchess he invited Nancy to visit him at Wakefield Lodge, near Stony Stratford, where he had his official resi- dence. Determined to cut a good figure at the Duke's home, Nancy ordered a very smart carriage for the trip and gave instructions that the Houghton arms ere to be emblazoned on the panels, but time was short and the pain- ing job had to be done in a hurry. Nancy had a sixty -mile drive in front of her but she set out late in the afternoon and was forced to stay the night at a Dunstable inn. The ostlers, to please the pretty girl, promised to do a particularly good job of washing down her coach, but it was dark so they could not see that it required special care. In the morning when Nancy stepped out of the inn and saw her carriage she gasped. The coat el arms had disappeared; it was hovered up by ugly streaks of paint! However, it didn't seem to matter much to the Duke, or to Nancy, for from this visit LIGHT MOMENT—Driven by a pair of colorful fish, 'an oyster shell chariot carries four beautiful "pearls" in swimsuits. The float, called "Queens of the Sea'_`, was a prize-winner In the Florence (Italy) Rificolone Carnival. there sprang up a great romance. During the next four years Nancy had the greatest possible influence on the Duke, but they both kept their romance a secret. To the world he was a statesman separated from his wife to whom he allowed £3,000 a year, but Nancy was his secret love. True, there was gossip and whispers, but until the couple appeared together at the theatre in 1768, there was no open scandal. Soon after that. Saturday night however, there was rumours that Nancy Parsons was investing in public funds with money she had received in bribes from people who sought her intervention in their own interests. Did these rumours cause the lovers to part? For part they did, after their romance had lasted at least five years. Now the separation between the Duke and Duchess of Grafton became a divorce, and three days later the Duchess married the young Lord Ossory, who was the co-respon- dent. The separation of the Duke from his adored Nancy puzzled people; many believed that this was but a cloak to hide their intention to marry, once the Duke was divorced. Three months later, however, the Duke of Grafton married the daughter of the Dean of Wor- cester. Nancy became frienly with Thomas Panton, brother of the Duchess of Ancaster, but that link was soon broken. Then along came the Duke of Dorset, a famed cricketer of the time, to seek Nancy's favours She "took up with him" and they left for a continental tour that was to last for about three years. During the tour the lovers visited Rome, where an Italian nobleman fellin love with Nancy and tried to kidnap her. The Duke of Dorset rescued her just In time, when the Italian was trying to force Nancy into his coach. Soon after this incident the Duke broke with Nancy. His childhood sweetheart had become the Countess of Derby. The Duke of Dorset met her by accident and persuaded her to leave her husband and they ran away to- gether, so Nancy was alone once more. Nothnig more was heard of Nancy until the "Morning Post" announced her marriage to the 25 -year-old Viscount Maynard, who was nearly twenty years younger. Nancy decided to con- tinue the continental tour she had begun with the Duke of Dorset. The newly -married couple vis- ited Naples where they were well received by the King and Queen of Italy, but the British colony refused to know her. Nancy behaved with the great - set dignity and eventually she won over her enemies. The couple were now the greatest success at court, but a few years THREE OF A KIND—Something to be proud of are these triplet Pfeifer calves, Faith, Hope' and Charity, shown with their owner, Raymond Palmer. The calves, now seoen months old, are an animal rarity. Authorities point out that triplet heifers occur once 1n 832,000 cattle births and that for all three to survive Is even rarer. The calves are second generation and artificially' bred. TABLE TALKS Jam Ambews. It takes inventiveness to use leftover foods attractively — to get something' out of nothing. This challenges the imagination and so often is more interest- ing In result than when starting from scratch. tl M • ' For instance, one evening the refrigerator yielded five ground - beef patties (previously cooked with onions and green peppers), a bowl of mashed white potatoes and one egg yolk. What to do to get an appetizing result! I placed the meat cakes in the four corners and center of a square pyrex dish, Beating the egg yolk I added it to the po- tatoes and shaped five cakes. These I placed on top of the meat. Into each vacant space I spooned corn from a can of nib - lets, dressed the top with bread crumbs, mild grated cheese and powdered parsley, and browned in the oven. Presto, a complete' casserole meal, writes Marjorie K. Stackhouse in The Christian Science Monitor. * • * A favorite I e f toyer lunch makes use of my scallop shells as ramekins. Place a portion of leftover baked tuna - noodle - mushroom casserole in each shell. Surround with leftover mashed white potato rolled to fit space. Cover with slightly diluted mushroom soup and parsley flakes. Brown under broiler. * 4 • There are all sorts of vari- ants for these individual, baked dishes. What is left of a salmon - celery -green pepper -onion cas- serole may be surrounded by cooked rice, topped with diluted celery soup and grated cheese, and browned. Or use leftover diced turkey or chicken. Sur- round with rice; cover with cream of chicken soup thinned with gravy or milk. • • '• Another favorite need not be a leftover affair. Have a pork rib roast cut through into chops. Bake in a large flat dish half- filled with water, covering each chop with slices of green pep - later they returned to England where the 18 -year-old Duke of Bedford fell violently in love with Nancy, now fifty. Viscount Maynard did not seem to object to this strange affair, but it end- ed when Nancy became ill in Lyons. At about this time she sepa- rated from her husband, the. Vis- count, who, tired of his elderly wife, fell in love with an attrac- tive French dancer. Nancy retired to Naples where she. had many friends at court. During the summer of 1802 she went to England but she did not see her husband. Her arrival in England was noted in the news- papers and it was said she in- tended to pass the rset of her life in Switzerland, but instead she went to a convent on the out- skirts of Paris, where she became a religious penitent. Six years later her death was reported in the newspapers, but the report was false. It is certain that Nancy did not die until 1814, the year before the Battle of Waterloo. She was then eighty. The account of her funeral was recorded by an unnamed Eng- lishwoman who was present. "The bishop," she wrote, "order- ed that all due honour should be rendered to the piety and good works of the deceased." The . funeral sermon was preached by a Protestant clergy- man in a Catholic church. As the body of Nancy Parsons, Vis- countess Maynard, was laid in the tomb, the watchnig peasantry wept for the death of a tailor's daughter, who half a century earlier had wielded power behind the scenes in English political life.: per, onion, and your favorite seasoning. If you prefer, place alternate layers of sliced, raw, white po- tatoes, onions and green pep- pers, with chops on top. Have a little water in the bottom of pan. Brown chops on both sides. Juice and fat mingles with vege- tables. * * * You can make your own chicken a la king quite simply: 1 can cream chicken soup 1Y2 to 1 can milk 2 to 3 cups diced turkey or chicken 1 package cooked frozen peas 1 chicken bouillon cube is cup sliced pimiento (or 6 large stuffed olives sliced) Season with savory, 1/2 .. tea-, spoon Worcestershire sauce, onion salt, small pinch red pep- per, plus salt and black pepper. • • * Desserts, too, may become tasty somethings from nothing —or next to nothing! It's al- ways fun to experiment with what you have on hand. In just much fashion I came up with three desserts. The refrigerator yielded 1/2 cup canned raspber- ries and 1 cup cocoa beverage. Here's the result: Dissolve one envelope standard unflavored gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water. Add 3/4 cup boiling water. Divide contents equally into three bowls. To No. 1 bowl add the rasp- berry juice probably less than 1/2 cup). When set, serve with raspberries and whipped cream. To No. 2 bowl add the / cup cocoa beverage plus I heaping teaspoon instant cocoa. When set fold in 2 tablespoons whipped cream. Top with .nuts. For No. 3 bowl: beat 1 egg and place in double boiler with 1/2 cup milk and 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar. When custard forms add dash nutmeg 'or 1/2 teaspoon va- nilla. Combine with gelatin. When set, fold in 2 tablespoons whipped cream. Serve topped with shredded coconut or grated pineapple. The cream for all may be whipped and sweetened to taste at one time. * * • Another favorite: prepare a gelatin -base with unflavored gelatin and using your favor- ite red fruit -juice: grape, cran- berry, raspberry, cherry. Pour V4 to 1/2 inch into each gelatin mold. Dilute remaining gelatin to make a sauce. When gelatin is set fill each mold with cooked rice which has been thoroughly mixed with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored to taste. To serve, empty mold into dessert dish and pour balance of thinned fruit gelatin over top. Bull Terrier Stops Battle When two fierce tribes in the mountains of New Guinea met one day to fight a tribal feud, they reckoned without a ,,dog. On a hill nearby a gold miner stood with his dog, a bull terrier. Unexpectedly, four arrows whiz- zed by his herd. Alarmed, the miner saw that some of the fierce - looking tribesmen were coming his way, still engaged in ti' i!tine. He fired a connte of warning shots from his rifle. It was tnen that the bull ter- rier intervened. Startled by the shouting and the gunfire, he ran among the struggling natives, biting all and sundry and, up- setting the men by throwing his heavybody against their legs. The miner watched in astonish- ment as the men of the attack- ing tribe fled. The battle was over. The victors, sure that the dog's intervention had won the battle for them, sent a deputation to the miner's camp that evening, carrying a large pig. This they insisted on "giving" to the dog as a reward! The Ancient Cradle Still Has ; Uses "Where's our old cradle?" asked my good wife - suddenly the other evening and with the utter composure necessary to living with said individual so long I replied, , "Over a beam in the barn." You can't fool me. "Jo wants to borrow it" she ,,said, "Good for Jo!" Jo and Joe, friends of ours, recently acquired --a handsome new 1957 model which they named Jan, and Jo has rebel ideas. She knows that the cradle has long been ridiculed from our lore by the experts, and that rocking' a child is the very worst thing you can do. It disturbs his unconscious and makes him insecureor some- thing, and confuses him. He will gurely grow up out of whack in his compensating coordinations. I remember my Grandmother said "Fudge!" when she heard that. Jo doesn't believe it, either. At least she wants to borrow a cradle enough for Joe to take some pictures. Jo wants Jan to be able to say she slept in a cradle. There's more to it than that. The experts spend their time analyzing the babies, but neg- lect the rights and privileges of parents and grand -parents. Who says rocking is a one-way ex- clusive? Regardless of what rocking does to Baby, what does it do for Mother? Who does the kid think he is? Jo admitted she also had a yen to rock Jan in a cradle. It's as broad as it's long. Anyway, I went out to the barn and brought down the family cradle. It was full of hay chaff, secondhand cobwebs, and -had a mud -wasp warren under the hood. In 13 years of desue- tude a cradle over a barn beam must amuse itself. I presumed the time would come when I'd have to get the thing down for a succeeding batch, but I hadn't counted on an outsider's bor- rowing it. .To will take care of it, all right. I wonder how long it would take to find a cradle in a store these days? Ours is very old. One of our few authentic family antiques. Grandfathers long forgotten snoozed in it and grew up to see their sons and grandsons take it over. It was first made for a lang Scots bairn, and as our lad has turned into a six- three-er he found it just right when his turn came. We had a big old dog then, named Gelert, and when we snuggled the new baby into the cradle by the hearth Gelert came in, sized up the situation, stretched out alongside, and in- dicated where he might be found henceforth should we Want him. He never left the cradle except while the lad was taken up. When somebody out- side the family came to peer at the baby Gelert would draw back his, weathered chops, bare his missing teeth, and growl deep in his being. People knew whose baby this was. Do you remember the legend of the real Gelert? It was about that time people began telling us they'd read an article by an expert saying the cradle was a barbarous device designed to ruin the growing child. Rocking a baby was the worst thing you could 'do. It was hard to subscribe to this contention sitting in a comfort- able chair by the glowing hard- wood coals, chewing a snappy apple, reading a worthy book, and giving the cradle an occa- sional shove. There was the dog with his nose on his paws, never awake and never asleep, eyeing you lest you shove too hard, and the youngster shar- ing the family atmosphere with every aspect of being glad. When Kathie came to live with us, selecting the wildest January day in the cruelest winter of our time, the cradle proved an ideal place for her. With folded lambskin in then bottom, it was an insulated haven in a world that we weren't otherwise keeping too warm. We had a pail of water freeze behind the stove that winter, and the lad ate his pap with mittens on. We also had a new dog, a pup of doubtful' intellect, and he found the cradle a delightful place to nap. Horror and hoor- aw accompanied the discovery that he was sleeping with Kathie. There he was with his head hanging over the edge and his tongue dangling, and there she was shoved to one side. Orders to cease and desist were posted, and sometimes honored, but he'd sneak back by times and we found he was kind and gentle about it, and just as pos- sessive as os-sessiveas Gelert had been—but more comfortable. 'By the time he was too big to share the cradle we had taught him to bunk on the floor. We always called this a Moses cradle. 1 think it was cunningly made by a craftsman who went by more than rule of thumb. The design is good. The rockers have just the right roll to them, and more or less curve would be wrong. And the cen- ter of gravity is neatly contain- ed, so you can rock the cradle easily, but it would take a real strong push to tip it over. The sides flare just so, making it handy to get the baby in and Out, and warding off floor drafts The hood is gracefully curved so this most useful item has a flow and charm. The top is thin oak, and I think it must have been steamed. Otherwise it would have cracked. There are several ways any- body could put a hood on a cradle, but this artisan took pains. Best of all, this cradle has that smoothness of long use, the wear pf time and the hands that touched it, and the rocker ends are worn where feet have treadled. When people consider an antique "as good as new" they miss the point. An antique is better than new when it is well worn from family use. True, the now fulfilled desire of Jo to rock her new baby in a cradle 'is scarcely more than a gesture. She was feeling something that ran deep and doesn't need to be explained. A new baby looks right in a cradle and a new mother fens right rocking it. Jan will grow up to be a perfectly modulated product of her own time, in spite of a toothless grin from a tired old cradle borrowed for the sake of a photograph, Some few may see the sense of it. Jo gays the most frequent re- mark is, 'Where in the world did you find it?"—By John Gould in The Christian Science Moni- tor. ISSUE 43 — 1954 13:. 172,000 DIVISIONS C TROOPS AP RED MILITARY STRENGTH—Estimates by U.S. authorities indica e that Russia and its satellites have some 4,468,000 men under arms. While the United States is conducting a sweeping face- lifting of its own' 200,000 -plus army in Europe for possible future atomic warfare, the Soviets have been making similar preparations. In addition to its huge force at home, Russia has 22 divisions in. 'East Germany. These troops, equipped with atomic weapons, are at peak combat readiness and will be until a new training cycle starts in December, when new recruits are sent in annually to replace dischargees. Figures on Newsrnap give breakdown by countries. Bulgaria's 13 divisions are considered by the Soviets as the most "trust- worthy' of the satellite armies.. Albania's three divisions are considered' understrength. The situation in Hungary is con- fused due .ot last' year's rebellion. The army deserted io the revolutionaries and the Soviets are trying to reorganize' it. But it no longer can be considered an effective military force.