DUST OF THE PAST

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

DUST OF THE PAST

INDIAN EMPIRE HERO

' (By

“Historicus”).

Robert Clive, hero of Arcot, victor of Plasgey and founder of the Indian Empire, killed himself, a broken worn-out man, on Nov. 22, 1744 at the age of 49. In effect his countrymen killed him. He had saved Madras and the Carnatic with a few hundred men, he had recaptured Calcutta and won Bengal almost without aid from home, he had enforced discipline among the East India Company's white officers and had laid the foundations of' a judiciary and civil service in British India. He had been given an Irish peerage, made a popular idol and elected to the House of Commons for Shrewsbury. He had gone out to India again to find the Company’s territories in turmoil and he restored them to order. He came back to find himself maligned, lampooned, attacked and charged with every crime save the one which really inspired the campaign against him—his insistence that officers of the Company must refrain from taking perquisites and bribes. He was denounced in Parliament, as he himself said, more like a sheepstealer than an M.P. He had to face cross-examina-tion by a Committee of Enquiry which' baited him for two sessions before giving him a qualified acquittal. His health had gone during his last term of duty in India. His nerves were shaken. He had always suffered from fits of moodiness, the reactions of a temperament capable of intense efforts. These grew worse and in one of them he poisoned himself. He is not buried in Westminster Abbey and within thirty-years the descendents who had inherited his fortune and estates discarded even the name Clive, assuming that of Herbert. But the Indian Empire remains as his memorial.

Queen Alexandra. Alexandra, queen consort and queen mother, link between Denmark apd Great Britain and' founder of Rose Day, now first of British charitable festivals, died quietly on Nov. 20, 1925 at Sandringham her Norfolk home, where she as Princess of Wales had lived the quiet life of a country gentlewoman and which her husband King Edward had specially assigned to her as her dower house in widowhood. After a funeral service Westminster Abbey on a snowy day her body was taken to Windsor and there placed beside that of her husband. Londoners still live who vividly remember how a slim, beautiful- girl, Princess Alexandra arrived in London and was slowly driven over London Bridge and through the City amid multitudes crazy with delight. More remember her serene beauty as Princess of Wales and as Queen; almost the youngest treasure a picture of a gracious little old lady driving through the streets in an open landau on Rose Day while white robed girls ran to throw flowers into her carriage. She was neither diplomat nor politician in the years she spent next to. the Throne; she did not unmake Ministers nor even set fashions th music and art. But she loved children and animals, she felt and -worked for the sick and suffering, she was simple and gracious and her name is fragrant.. For . one clear-sighted act British medical, science must always be her debtor. ' In 1899 she caused to be brought from Denmark and placed in a London hospital the lamp invented by her countryman Finsen for the cure of lupus. Thereby she concentrated. attention on the healing power of light, stimulating research which led to the use of ultra-violet rays and the fuller recognition of the therapeutic value of sunlight “King and Martyr.”

People who I’eflect on the character and fate of Charles I, “King and Martyr” seldom recollect or allow for the fact that by birth he was a Scotsman. Fewer if any recall that his mother was Danish. Yet both his ancestry and an infancy passed in Scottish palaces must have affected his disposition and outlook on life as much as all subsequent influences. To his Scottish blood and earliest surroundings were surely due his dogmatic attitude on vexed questions and his stubborness when a little flexibility might have changed enemies to friends. To the fact that his mother was Anne of Denmark we owe —who shall say what? At any rate, we owe Hamlet, which was written in tactful allusion to that fact. It was on Nov. 19, 1600 that Charles was born in the Palace r< of Dunfermline which still stands in ruins above the Abbey of that town and looking down on a dark glen which a donation from Dunfermline’s later son, Andrew Carnegie, has now converted to a public park. Like his father Charles was a puny child, backward in speaking and walking and far less fitted by nature for a prince than his bold handsome elder brother Prince Henry. Both accompanied their father to England in 1603 when the Crowns were joined. In 1612 Henry died of a fever and Charles, an undersized boy with an impediment in his speech, became heir to the Throne of the three Kingdoms. It was a fatal change for the Stuarts and for chances that the centralised administration established by the Tudors would develop into an absolute monarchy like that of France. r Smithfield Market.

Smithfield Market was inaugurated by the Lord Mayor of London on November 24, 1868. Perpetual change has been the life story of the metropolis, and Smithfield could be no exception. From its earliest days it was always a market of some kind but to-day its business moves in more orderly and prosaic conditions. Smithfield would be the last place to look for romance, and yet few spots in London have witnessed more romantic happenings. Here armoured knights tilted a lance with the chivalry of Europe. In the times of the early Edwards it was a favourite place for tournaments, and many a spear was splintered amm the roars of the populace that only gathers now for less heroic reasons. It was a popular place for mediaeval duels and ordeal by battle. It has seen its share of torture, burnings and executions, Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth, all had their burnings in olid Smithfield. Here Wat Tyler advanced towards Richard, tossing his dagger in the air, only to receive a sword through his throat. Smithfield came before Tyburn in the business of hanging. Here on St. Bartholomew’s Eve 1305, Sir W’illiam Wallace was hanged and quartered. Here Mortimer perished ignominiously. But if tragedy played its part so did comedy. Jesters, meny andrews, montebanks, and puppet-sho v proprietors found their way to Smithfield, and made the place ring with the crude merriment of the fair ground. Modern conditions have made vast alterations. The only thing that is romantic about Smithfield to-day is its history.