Historical
Fashion Victim of the Week
by DG
Meet Roswell S Ripley
Whatever the Opposite of 'Historical Hottie' is, that's
this fellow. I stumbled across Roswell S (for Sabine!) Ripley while searching the Library of Congress picture files for something about UFOs. Anyway, his portrait was labelled 'CSA' and
between that and the horrible facial hair, I guessed he was yet another of the
far-too-numerous tribe of Confederate generals. And he was. He wasn't
any good at it, which was somewhat surprising, or maybe not. He did graduate
7th in his class at West Point.
Ulysses S Grant was 21st in that same class.
Information for non-US people: US Grant was the winning general, also a
two-term US president. Come to think of it, that information's good for US people,
too, some of whom fell asleep in history class instead of listening to Mr Sauer talk about the Alamo.
I'll bet people used to say around Ripley, 'Don't
mention the war.' If John Cleese had been around, he could have said, 'It was
his fault: he fired on Fort Sumter.' And he would have been right.
In the 1850s, Ripley went fortune-hunting. Some gossipy
people talked about him in letters. He eventually got the girl, though. She was
a rich young widow from Charleston. Which explains, finally, how an Ohio man
ended up as a Confederate general.
Gen. Martin told me yesterday that R. had been for
some time vigorously addressing the widow Sparks. He brought the affair to an
unfortunate finish a few days ago, and got her rejection. In his rage at this
result, he bolted down stairs & not permitted to give the lady kick for
kick, he either employed his boots, or threatened to do so, on the breech of
the bar keeper, who has had him arrested by a magistrate's warrant &
brought to town...
Letter from William Gilmore Simms to James Henry
Hammond, Charleston, South Carolina, 18 August 1852.
From Letters of William Gilmore Simms, vol 3,
p196. Just who were these gossipy people, and why did somebody bother to
edit their tea-spilling correspondences?
You think your best-selling novelists are buying fame
that will last forever, don't you? It is to laugh. You've never heard of
William Gilmore Simms. I'd never heard of him, and I'm from the US
South. But Edgar Allan Poe said he was the best novelist in America back in 1845.
So there.
As a poet, Simms wrote like this:
He is a god who wills it — with a power
To work his purpose out in earth and air, Though
neither speak him fair !—
He goes on like that for quite a while: I decided to
leave him to it. The poem is called 'Imagination'.
James Henry Hammond was a US senator. He got elected to
that august governing body in spite of the rape and incest scandals. They didn't
know about the gay affair, though. This was back in the Bad Old Days when
fights broke out on the Senate floor that put senators in the hospital. Hammond
was a big-time plantation owner with 300 slaves, so he quit the US government
in 1860. He died in 1864.
I was curious when I found out JH Hammond died at the
age of 56. It turns out he 'did his own research' when it came to medicating
his stomach problems. He died of mercury poisoning.
My comment after all this overdose of history: isn't anything new under the sun?
Quote
of the Week
Words of Wisdom
Some of you all need to get your crown chakra out of
your root chakra.
Anastasia MacKenzie, Bluesky
Modern
Poetry Section
(Eat
your heart out, William Gilmore Simms)
by DG
The 'prompt-word' was 'towel'. Srsly.
Video
of the Day:
Fetching
Goat
(DG)
The little goat decided to show off. We paused to
admire. It's good to notice other species.
Beautiful
Cat
For I tell you that not even Solomon in all his
glory was dressed like one of these.
Matthew 6:29 (And yes, he was talking about flowers.
The only cats in the Bible are lions. The cats won't let me forget this.)
Peace. Dmitri
Gheorgheni, Editor
The cat I had as a teenager looked very similar to this. She died at 15... she was a very good cat.
ReplyDelete<3 My neighbours have a cat similar to this, too - lovely muted tortoiseshell colouring.
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