Cramahe Archives Digital Collection

The Colborne Express (Colborne Ontario), 24 Oct 1957, p. 2

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THE COLBORNE EXPRESS, COLBORNE, ONT. OCT. 24, 1957 Foiled 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 box and was gazed at by the adoring ladies in hooped petticoats who sat uncomfortably in the pit stalls. In the stalls there were two vacant seats. Just before the curtain rose on the first act of the opera, two people moved into those seats. The audience gasped; the women oohed and aahed; 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 England and the woman with him 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 ducai couple separated was that the Duchess was a great gambler, a pursuit that the Duke hated, although he often frequented "the racecourses himself and was a keen ridedr to hounds. But who was Nancy Parsons and how did she come into the picture? 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 beautiful girl in her late twenties, a girl of aristocratic appearance, but she certainly was not of aristocratic 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 education, 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 quarrel with him, that he had sent one of his party to France to bring her back, and she had returned in one of the royal yachts. True or false, it is impossible to say. Nancy was a strange young woman, known to be highly intelligent and a pious churchgoer, but how did she become Mrs. Houghton? It appears that she had no legal right to call herself Mrs. Houghton; she had met Captain Houghton in London and he had enticed her to accompany him to the West Indies, where he treated her badly forcing her to run away and return to London absolutely penniless. Her enemies, of whom she had plenty, claimed that she became a lady of the 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 residence. 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 paining 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 6f arms had disappeared; it was covered 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 beautiful "pearls" in swimswits. The float, called "Queens of the Sea", was a prize-v 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-respondent. 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 Worcester. 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 fell in 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 lea*e her husband and they ran away together, 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 continue the continental tour she had begun with the Duke of Dorset. The newly-married couple visited 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 heifer calves, Faith, Hope and Charity, shown with their owner, Raymond Palmer. The calves, now seven months old, are an cmimal rarity. Authorities point out that triplet heifers occur once in 832,000 cattle births and that for all three to survive Is even rarer. The calves are second generation and artificially bred. TABLE TALKS eioneAncbews. It takes inventiveness to use leftover foods attractively -- to get something out of nothing. This challenges the imagination and so often is more interesting in result than when starting from scratch. 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 appetising 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 potatoes 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 leftover 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. There are all sorts of variants for these individual, baked dishes. What is left of a salmon-celery-green pepper-onion casserole may be surrounded by cooked rice, topped with diluted celery soup and grated cheese, and browned. Or use leftover diced turkey or chicken. Surround 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 ended when Nancy became ill in Lyons. At about this time she separated from her husband, the Viscount, who, tired of his elderly wife, fell in love with an attractive 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 newspapers and it was said she intended to pass the rset of her life in Switzerland, but instead she went to a convent on the outskirts 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 Englishwoman who was present. "The bishop," she wrote, "ordered that all due honour should be rendered to the piety and good works of the deceased." The funeral sermon was preached by a Protestant clergyman in a Catholic church. As the body of Nancy Parsons, Viscountess 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 potatoes, onions and green peppers, with chops on top. Have a little water_ in the bottom of pan. Brown chops on both sides. Juice and fat mingles with vegetables. You can make your own chicken a la king quite simply: 1 can cream chickea soup i/j to 3i can milk 2 to 3 cups diced turkey or chicken 1 package cooked frozen peas 1 chicken bouillon cube % cup sliced pimiento (or 6 large stuffed olives sliced) Season with savory, Ys teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, onion salt, smaH pinch red pepper, plus salt and black pepper. Desserts, too, may become tasty somethings from nothing --or next to nothing! It's always fun to experiment with what you have on hand. In just such fashion I came up with three desserts. The refrigerator yielded Yi cup canned raspberries and Yi cup cocoa beverage. Here's the result: Dissolve one envelope standard unflavored gelatin in Vi cup cold water. Add % cup boiling water. Divide contents equally into three bowls. To No. 1 bowl add the raspberry juice probably less than Yi cup). When set, serve with raspberries and whipped cream. To No. 2 bowl add the Yi 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 Yz cup milk and 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar. When custard forms add dash nutmeg or % teaspoon vanilla. 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 favorite red fruit-juice: grape, cranberry, raspberry, cherry. Pour Yi to % 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 whis-zed by his herd. Alarmed, the miner saw that some of the fierce - looking tribesmen were coming his way, still engaged in fighting. He fired a couole of warning shots from his rifle. It was then that the bull terrier intervened. Startled by the shouting and the gunfire, he ran among the struggling natives, biting all and sundry and upsetting the men by throwing his heavy body against their legs. The miner watched in astonishment as the men of the attacking 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 rewardl 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 insecure, or something, and confuses him. He will ■urely 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 neglect the rights and privileges of parents and grand-parents. Who says rocking is a one-way exclusive? 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 desuetude 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 borrowing it. Jo 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 indicated where he might be found henceforth should we want him. He never left the cradle except while the lad was taken up. When somebody outside 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 ft 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 hardwood coals, chewing a snappy apple, reading a worthy book, and giving the cradle an occasional 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 sharing 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 the 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 possessive as 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. I 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 center of gravity is neatly contained, 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 anybody 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 of 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 desiie 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 feels 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 borrower! for the sake of a photograph Some few may see the sense cf it. Jo says the most frequent remark is, "Where in the world did you find it?"--By John Gould in The Christian Science Monitor. 11 RED MILITARY STRENGTH--Estimates by U.S. authorities indicate that Russia and its satellites have some 4,468,000 men under arms. While the United States is conducting a sweeping facelifting 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 Newsmap give breakdown by countries. Bulgaria's 13 divisions are considered by the Soviets as the most "trustworthy" of the satellite armies. Albania's three divisions ere considered understrength. The situation in Hungary is confused due ot last year's rebellion. The army deserted 1o tKs revolutionaries and the Soviets are trying to reorganize it. But it no longer can be considered an effective military force.

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