United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And any one who knows the English upper classes must know more than one illustrious instance besides that of Miss Burdett Coutts, or the late Dowager Lady Londonderry in which a woman has proved herself able to use wealth and power as well, or better, than most men. The woman at least is not likely, by gambling, horseracing, and profligacy, to bring herself and her class to shame.
Long Odds, Clarke's first story, deals with English life, and bears no resemblance in quality or kind to the later novel with which his name is chiefly associated. It is primarily the tragedy of a mésalliance, and horseracing and politics assist the plot, with the usual complications of gambling and intrigue. The story has, however, a good deal less to do with sport than the title suggests.
And before it had gone he set up as an offering to Apollo of Actium a trireme, a four-banked ship, and so on up to one of ten banks, from the captive vessels; and he built a larger temple. He also instituted a quinquennial musical and gymnastic contest involving horseracing, a "sacred" festival, as they call all which include distribution of food, and entitled it Actia.
It's another nobleman, Lord Brailstone, has come into money lately and hired him for his pugilist when it's not horseracing. Gower spoke of thanks to Lord Fleetwood for the independence allowing him to take a wife and settle to work in his little Surrey home. He, too, showed he could have said more and was advised not to push at a shut gate.
Pontellier himself had no particular leaning toward horseracing, and was even rather inclined to discourage it as a pastime, especially when he considered the fate of that blue-grass farm in Kentucky. He endeavored, in a general way, to express a particular disapproval, and only succeeded in arousing the ire and opposition of his father-in-law.
"MY DEAR HEELTAP, You know my opinion about horseracing, and though I blame neither you nor any brother Englishman who enjoys that manly sport, you will, I am sure, appreciate the conscientious motives which induce me not to appear among my friends and constituents on the festival of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th instant.
"My dear Bessie, a man may win as well as lose. You see when I go into society there are certain things expected of me; and my only chance of getting on is by making myself agreeable to the people whose influence is worth having." "But I can't see that card-playing leads to your getting commissions for pictures, Austin, no more than horseracing nor billiards.
Romfrey was of those who said to his countrymen, 'Go yachting; go cricketing; go boat-racing; go shooting; go horseracing, nine months of the year, while the other Europeans go marching and drilling. Those occupations he considered good for us; and our much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and therefore good.
Almo explained that he had always been devoted to horseracing and that he wanted formally and regularly to article himself to one of the racing companies as a charioteer; that he had always craved that life and had longed for it more and more as his career as a soldier went on. He said there was no use in his continuing a life he detested, nor missing the happiness he anticipated as a charioteer.
Thus English political ideas were adopted with more or less accuracy and were accompanied by English fashions: horses and horseracing, short stirrups, plain clothes, linen dresses, and bread and butter. Clubs also are an English invention. The first one in Paris was opened in 1782.
Word Of The Day