#Sir John Lubbock

[kino-free-time]

On the Origin and Metamorphoses of Insects - selected illustration

by Sir John Lubbock (1872)

source

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes 1 - 100

[1] Origin of Species, chap. iii.

[2] Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165.

[3] Leaving aside the pre-Darwinian writers, like Toussenel, Fée, and many others, several works containing many striking instances of mutual aid — chiefly, however, illustrating animal intelligence were issued previously to that date. I may mention those of Houzeau, Les facultés etales des animaux, 2 vols., Brussels, 1872; L. Büchner’s Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere, 2nd ed. in 1877; and Maximilian Perty’s Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere, Leipzig, 1876. Espinas published his most remarkable work, Les Sociétés animales, in 1877, and in that work he pointed out the importance of animal societies, and their bearing upon the preservation of species, and entered upon a most valuable discussion of the origin of societies. In fact, Espinas’s book contains all that has been written since upon mutual aid, and many good things besides. If I nevertheless make a special mention of Kessler’s address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. The same ideas were developed next year (in April 1881) by J. Lanessan in a lecture published in 1882 under this title: La lutte pour l’existence et l’association pour la lutte. G. Romanes’s capital work, Animal Intelligence, was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in Animals. About the same time (1883), Büchner published another work, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air.

[4] Memoirs (Trudy) of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi. 1880.

[5] See Appendix I.

[6] George J. Romanes’s Animal Intelligence, 1st ed. p. 233.

[7] Pierre Huber’s Les fourmis indigëes, Génève, 1861; Forel’s Recherches sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J.T. Moggridge’s Harvesting Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the hands of every boy and girl. See also: Blanchard’s Métamorphoses des Insectes, Paris, 1868; J.H. Fabre’s Souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1886; Ebrard’s Etudes des mœurs des fourmis, Génève, 1864; Sir John Lubbock’s Ants, Bees, and Wasps, and so on.

[8] Forel’s Recherches, pp. 244, 275, 278. Huber’s description of the process is admirable. It also contains a hint as to the possible origin of the instinct (popular edition, pp. 158, 160). See Appendix II.

[9] The agriculture of the ants is so wonderful that for a long time it has been doubted. The fact is now so well proved by Mr. Moggridge, Dr. Lincecum, Mr. MacCook, Col. Sykes, and Dr. Jerdon, that no doubt is possible. See an excellent summary of evidence in Mr. Romanes’s work. See also Die Pilzgaerten einiger Süd-Amerikanischen Ameisen, by Alf. Moeller, in Schimper’s Botan. Mitth. aus den Tropen, vi. 1893.

[10] This second principle was not recognized at once. Former observers often spoke of kings, queens, managers, and so on; but since Huber and Forel have published their minute observations, no doubt is possible as to the free scope left for every individual’s initiative in whatever the ants do, including their wars.

[11] H.W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 59 seq.

[12] N. Syevertsoff, Periodical Phenomena in the Life of Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles of Voronèje, Moscow, 1855 (in Russian).

[13] A. Brehm, Life of Animals, iii. 477; all quotations after the French edition.

[14] Bates, p. 151.

[15] Catalogue raisonné des oiseaux de la faune pontique, in Démidoff’s Voyage; abstracts in Brehm, iii. 360. During their migrations birds of prey often associate. One flock, which H. Seebohm saw crossing the Pyrenees, represented a curious assemblage of “eight kites, one crane, and a peregrine falcon” (The Birds of Siberia, 1901, p. 417).

[16] Birds in the Northern Shires, p. 207.

[17] Max. Perty, Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 87, 103.

[18] G. H. Gurney, The House-Sparrow (London, 1885), p. 5.

[19] Dr. Elliot Couës, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. xiii. No. 2, p. 11.

[20] Brehm, iv. 567.

[21] As to the house-sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T.W. Kirk, described as follows the attack of these “impudent” birds upon an “unfortunate” hawk. — “He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi — a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chattering and noise” (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute; Nature, Oct. 10, 1891).

[22] Brehm, iv. 671 seq.

[23] R. Lendenfeld, in Der zoologische Garten, 1889.

[24] Syevettsoff’s Periodical Phenomena, p. 251.

[25] Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760.

[26] The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjöld, London, 1879, p. 135. See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel.

[27] See Appendix III.

[28] Elliot Couës, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. Among the gulls (Larus argentatus), Polyakoff saw on a marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting grounds of a very great number of these birds were always patrolled by one male, which warned the colony of the approach of danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the enemy with great vigour. The females, which had five or six nests together On each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their nests in search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are extremely unprotected and easily become the prey of the rapacious birds, were never left alone (“Family Habits among the Aquatic Birds,” in Proceedings of the Zool. Section of St. Petersburg Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874).

[29] Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White’s Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI.

[30] Dr. Couës, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin U.S. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7.

[31] It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side, it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed several times, and it was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on both sides of their migratory columns (Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p. 133).

[32] H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit.

[33] The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with reference to England several examples may be found in Charles Dixon’s Among the Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches arrive during winter in vast flocks; and about the same time, i.e. in November, come flocks of bramblings; redwings also frequent the same places “in similar large companies,” and so on (pp. 165, 166).

[34] S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316.

[35] Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404.

[36] Houzeau’s Études, ii. 463.

[37] For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant’s Natural History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes’s Animal Intelligence, p. 432.

[38] See Emil Hüter’s letter in L. Büchner’s Liebe.

[39] See Appendix IV.

[40] With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights. Sociability is thus extended to the whole species — not only to a given society, or to a nation, as we saw it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow, and buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas — we are told by Hudson — “come from a distance to dig out those that are buried alive” (l.c., p. 311). This is a widely-known fact in La Plata, verified by the author.

[41] Handbuch für Jäger und Jagdberechtigte, quoted by Brehm, ii. 223.

[42] Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle.

[43] In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit. Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley’s Big Game Shooting (Badminton Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various species living together in East Africa.

[44] Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His efforts were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed every day; and he was an excellent hunter.

[45] According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups than the “compound family.” “I have frequently observed,” he wrote, “in the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants in great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered insecure” (Wild Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102).

[46] Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.).

[47] Romanes’s Animal Intelligence, p. 472.

[48] Brehm, i. 82; Darwin’s Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff expedition of 1899–1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a similar fight.

[49] The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau: “The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual war — whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step — created society” (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been created by man; it is anterior to man.

[50] Such monographs as the chapter on “Music and Dancing in Nature” which we have in Hudson’s Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross’ Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature.

[51] Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling together — in many cases always at the same spot — to indulge in antics and dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson’s experience is that nearly all mammals and birds (“probably there are really no exceptions”) indulge frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264).

[52] For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm.

[53] Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58.

[54] To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried away by another badger suddenly appearing on the scene; rats have been seen feeding a blind couple (Seelenleben der Thiere, p. 64 seq.). Brehm himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded; its wound was several weeks old (Hausfreund, 1874, 715; Büchner’s Liebe, 203). Mr. Blyth saw Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades; and so on.

[55] Man and Beast, p. 344.

[56] L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272; Descent of Man, ch. iv.

[57] One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of another swallow species in North America; the recent increase of the missel-thrush in Scotland has caused the decrease of the song.thrush; the brown rat has taken the place of the black rat in Europe; in Russia the small cockroach has everywhere driven before it its greater congener; and in Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small stingless bee. Two other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned in the preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts, A.R. Wallace remarks in a footnote relative to the Scottish thrushes: “Prof. A. Newton, however, informs me that these species do not interfere in the way here stated” (Darwinism, p. 34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to its amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human dwellings (low cellars, sewers, etc.), as also on the banks of canals and rivers; it also undertakes distant migrations in numberless bands. The black rat, on the contrary, prefers staying in our dwellings themselves, under the floor, as well as in our stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be exterminated by man; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or starved out by the brown rat and not by man.

[58] “But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms.... By my theory these allied species are descended from a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties between its past and present states” (Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also p. 137, 296 (all paragraph “On Extinction”).

[59] According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special study of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed there some time, and returned next to Asia. Whether this double migration be confirmed or not, the fact of a former extension of the ancestor of our horse over Asia, Africa, and America is settled beyond doubt.

[60] The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95.

[61] Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschädigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel (Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq.

[62] Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187.

[63] A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Société des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1889, p. 625.

[64] See Appendix V.

[65] Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: “The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life,” by an Old Transformist.

[66] “One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection acts is, by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat different mode of life, whereby they are able to seize unappropriated places in Nature” (Origin of Species, p. 145) — in other words, to avoid competition.

[67] See Appendix VI.

[68] Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165

[69] The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition.

[70] Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in polygamous families, under the leadership of “a strong and jealous male.” I do not know how far that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But the passage from Brehm’s Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys; but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopithèques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they “nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in families” (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing many males, render the “polygamous family” more than doubtful further observation is evidently wanted.

[71] Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890.

[72] That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether.

[73] Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242.

[74] Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896; L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four writers — as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon, — starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan — the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to MacLennan — the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt — the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his epoc.making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization, — both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc.

[75] See Appendix VII.

[76] For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim Kovalevsky’s Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his Lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l’évolution de la famille et de la propriété, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875.

[77] It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan’s Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their “thinkers” and savants — wizards, doctors, prophets, etc. — whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe.

[78] Col. Collins, in Philips’ Researches in South Africa, London, 1828. Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334.

[79] Lichtenstein’s Reisen im südlichen Afrika, ii. Pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811.

[80] Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also Fritsch’s Die Eingeboren Afrika’s, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and Drei Jahre in Süd Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen Folklore, Capetown, 1875.

[81] Elisée Reclus, Géographie Universelle, xiii. 475.

[82] P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333, 336, etc.

[83] Quoted in Waitz’s Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq.

[84] The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the Kamilaroi language, are best known under this aspect, through the capital work of Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii, Melbourne, 1880. See also A.W. Howitt’s “Further Note on the Australian Class Systems,” in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol. xviii. p. 31, showing the wide extension of the same organization in Australia.

[85] The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian Aborigines, Adelaide, 1879, p. 11.

[86] Gray’s Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, London, 1841, vol. ii. pp. 237, 298.

[87] Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 652. I abridge the answers.

[88] Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 386.

[89] The same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a high reputation of honesty. “It never happens that the Papua be untrue to his promise,” Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen, 1865, p. 829.

[90] Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1880, pp. 161 seq. Few books of travel give a better insight into the petty details of the daily life of savages than these scraps from Maklay’s notebooks.

[91] L.F. Martial, in Mission Scientifique au Cap Horn, Paris, 1883, vol. i. pp. 183–201.

[92] Captain Holm’s Expedition to East Greenland.

[93] In Australia whole clans have been seen exchanging all their wives, in order to conjure a calamity (Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, 1890, p. 342). More brotherhood is their specific against calamities.

[94] Dr. H. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, p. 26 (Meddelelser om Grönland, vol. xi. 1887).

[95] Dr. Rink, loc. cit. p. 24. Europeans, grown in the respect of Roman law, are seldom capable of understanding that force of tribal authority. “In fact,” Dr. Rink writes, “it is not the exception, but the rule, that white men who have stayed for ten or twenty years among the Eskimo, return without any real addition to their knowledge of the traditional ideas upon which their social state is based. The white man, whether a missionary or a trader, is firm in his dogmatic opinion that the most vulgar European is better than the most distinguished native.” — The Eskimo Tribes, p. 31.

[96] Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870.

[97] Dall saw it in Alaska, Jacobsen at Ignitok in the vicinity of the Bering Strait. Gilbert Sproat mentions it among the Vancouver indians; and Dr. Rink, who describes the periodical exhibitions just mentioned, adds: “The principal use of the accumulation of personal wealth is for periodically distributing it.” He also mentions (loc. cit. p. 31) “the destruction of property for the same purpose,’ (of maintaining equality).

[98] See Appendix VIII.

[99] Veniaminoff, Memoirs relative to the District of Unalashka (Russian), 3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1840. Extracts, in English, from the above are given in Dall’s Alaska. A like description of the Australians’ morality is given in Nature, xlii. p. 639.

[100] It is most remarkable that several writers (Middendorff, Schrenk, O. Finsch) described the Ostyaks and Samoyedes in almost the same words. Even when drunken, their quarrels are insignificant. “For a hundred years one single murder has been committed in the tundra;” “their children never fight;” “anything may be left for years in the tundra, even food and gin, and nobody will touch it;” and so on. Gilbert Sproat “never witnessed a fight between two sober natives” of the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island. “Quarreling is also rare among their children.” (Rink, loc. cit.) And so on.

[grelleswife]

Except yana's "PhD" is literally how they did think back then lmao..

(Pretty sure this ask is referring to my post here about the blood type to which each class at F.O.L. Orphanage corresponds)

It’s true that Victorian science sometimes verged on the absurd by modern standards. For example, phrenology, the disgraced school of thought purporting that the contours of a person’s skull revealed their personality and mental traits, was received with great enthusiasm by many during the nineteenth century. Other (mis)adventures in STEM ran the gamut from James Glaisher’s attempt to ride a hot air balloon to outer space (which did not go well) to Sir John Lubbock’s quest to teach his dog how to read. Put in this perspective, Yana’s wacky Kuro hematology doesn’t seem too far out of step with the time period!

But F.O.L.’s “clinical trial” on manipulating children’s wardrobes, education, and physical activities to make them better blood donors for the Star Lords also fits right in with the typical animanga crimes against science and medicine (like L’s ability to live entirely off sugary sweets and coffee without suffering from malnutrition in Death Note, or the notorious boob physics which pervade the genre 😂).

Either way, you probably don’t want to trust Dr. Toboso’s work when making a study guide for your next biochem quiz! 😜

[jonathanblossom]

Rest is not idleness, and lying sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time🍃✨

Sir John Lubbock

[mynew1111111111]

The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia, Mesopotamia and Africa (c. 10,000 BC to c. 2,000 BC). It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.[1]

The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago, when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East and Mesopotamia, and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt, the Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period, c. 3150 BC.[2][3][4] In China, it lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture,[5] as it did in Scandinavia.[6][7][8]

Origin

[edit]Approximate centers of origin of agriculture in the Neolithic Revolution and its spread in prehistory: the Fertile Crescent (12,000 BP), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9,000 BP) and the New Guinea Highlands (9,000–6,000 BP), Central Mexico (5,000–4,000 BP), Northern South America (5,000–4,000 BP), sub-Saharan Africa (5,000–4,000 BP, exact location unknown), eastern North America (4,000–3,000 BP).[9]

Following the ASPRO chronology, the Neolithic started in around 10,200 BC in the Levant, arising from the Natufian culture, when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming. The Natufian period or "proto-Neolithic" lasted from 12,500 to 9,500 BC, and is taken to overlap with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA) of 10,200–8800 BC. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas (about 10,000 BC) are thought to have forced people to develop farming.

The founder crops of the Fertile Crescent were wheat, lentil, pea, chickpeas, bitter vetch, and flax. Among the other major crop domesticated were rice, millet, maize (corn), and potatoes. Crops were usually domesticated in a single location and ancestral wild species are still found.[1]

Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs. By about 8000 BC, it included domesticated sheep and goats,

[owiuiji511]

G6 CLARO, NICOLE

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." –Sir John Lubbock 🌳🍃

#TheEarthandI

#ScienceEnglishMathMonth2023@CSJ

#Grade11STEM6BlessesLouisJosephFrancois

[frimleyblogger]

Thirty-Five Of The Gang

More #Victorian #slang including Public holidays, standard rates and weak-headedness.

According to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, St Lubbock was slang for an orgy or drunken riot. It owed its origin to the tendency of drunken holidaymakers to run amok on the August Bank Holiday that was introduced as a result of a bill proposed by Sir John Lubbock in 1871. It confirmed Easter Monday, Whit Monday, and Boxing Day as bank holidays and introduced the first…

[materialofonebeing]

Sir John Lubbock and bees etc.

Sir John Lubbock, or Lord Avebury, 1834-1913, was a famous polymath.

The Spectator covered Lubbock's research into bees in 1874 and 1875 (X, X), and the caricature of Lubbock as a bee was from Punch in 1882 (X).  Lubbock published Ants, Bees and Wasps: a record of observations on the habits of the social hymenoptera in 1884 (X, later edition).  Lubbock kept a bee colony in his sitting room (Bill Bryson, At Home).  The Holmes stories never specified Holmes’s bees were outdoors, come to think of it.

Watson and Holmes took an interest in "Neolithic man" in Hound and Devil's Foot.  In 1864, Lubbock, a friend of Darwin, published a book on pre-history and coined the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic (X).  A photo of Lubbock unveiling a dinosaur skeleton in 1905 almost could be an illustration for Conan Doyle's 1912 The Lost World about dinosaurs and early man (X, X). 

In 1897 Conan Doyle attended a dinner of the Society of Authors of London at which Lubbock presided (X).  

Does anyone know of a source exploring connections of Lubbock and Conan Doyle?  Since this was just spit-balling per usual.

[ladyrue]

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

- Sir John Lubbock

[spudlanyon]

for my purposes, the referenced texts E.M. Forster made in his book, The Aspects of the Novel.

William George Clark. Gazpacho: Or Summer Months in Spain. —. Peloponnesus: Notes of Study and Travel. —. The Works of William Shakespeare - Cambridge Edition. —. The Present Dangers of the Church of England. John Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress. Walter Pater. Marius the Epicurean. Edward John Trelawny. Adventures of a Younger Son. Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year. —. Robinson Crusoe. —. Moll Flanders. Max Beerbohm. Zuleika Dobson. Samuel Johnson. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. James Joyce. Ulysses. —. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. William Henry Hudson. Green Mansions. Herman Melville. Moby Dick. —. "Billy Budd". Elizabeth Gaskell. Cranford (followed by My Lady Ludlow, and Mr. Harrison's Confessions). Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. —. Shirley. —. Villette. Sir Walter Scott. The Heart of Midlothian (part of the Waverley Novels). —. The Antiquary (part of the Waverley Novels). —. The Bride of Lammermoor (part of the Waverley Novels). George Meredith. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. —. The Egoist. —. Evan Harrington. —. The Adventures of Harry Richmond. —. Beauchamp's Career. Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. William Shakespeare. King Lear. Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. —. Joseph Andrews. Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The Blue Lagoon (part of a trilogy; followed by The Garden of God and The Gates of Morning). Clayton Meeker Hamilton. Materials and Methods of Fiction. George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss. —. Adam Bede. Robert Louis Stevenson. The Master of Ballantrae. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The Last Days of Pompeii. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. —. Our Mutual Friend. —. Bleak House. Laurence Stern. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse. T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood.

One Thousand and One Nights. Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights. Charles Percy Sanger. The Structure of Wuthering Heights. Johan David Wyss. The Swiss Family Robinson. D. H. Lawrence. Women in Love. Arnold Bennett. The Old Wives' Tale. Anthony Trollope. The Last Chronicle of Barset. Jane Austen. Emma. —. Mansfield Park. —. Persuasion. H. G. Wells. Tono-Bungay. —. Boon. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary. Percy Lubbock. The Craft of Fiction. —. Roman Pictures. André Gide. The Counterfeiters. Homer. Odyssey. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native. —. The Dynasts. —. Jude the Obscure. Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard. Oliver Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield. David Garnett. Lady Into Fox. Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock. Norman Matson. Flecker's Magic. Samuel Richardson. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. Anatole France. Thaïs. Henry James. The Ambassadors. —. The Spoils of Poynton. —. Portrait of a Lady. —. What Maisie Knew. —. The Wings of the Dove. Jean Racine. Plays.

I. A. Richards.

[kino-free-time]

On the Origin and Metamorphoses of Insects - selected illustration

by Sir John Lubbock (1872)

source

[zaharadessert]

Wrong From Right (3/4)

Summary: Killian finds himself travelling alone to Houston for check-ups and therapy on his injured hand as Emma, Henry and Alice stay in Lubbock for work and school. But none of them realise just how far Walsh Ozman is willing to go to get what he wants, and what he wants hasn’t changed since the last time they saw him...

Rating: Explicit (Attempted non-con, Graphic descriptions of violence, threat)

Notes: This is the last part, and it’s probably the worst, so if you want to wait until it’s all up before you read it, then I am totally fine with that! I’d like to say a huge thank you to @snowbellewells​ for betaing this part too! You’re awesome, and I love you! Again, the artwork is by me, with a huge thank you to @kaeleemac​ for the Silver!David manip! It’s so ruggedly wonderful, thanks you! You're getting this early you lucky lot because next week is Halloweek and I don't want to be posting two different things in one day. This is horrible and I kind of hate myself. I promise I fix it...

Taglist: @jrob64​ @xhookswenchx​ @kmomof4​ @wefoundloveunderthelight​ @superchocovian​ @lfh1226-linda​ @teamhook​ @jonesfandomfanatic​ @tiganasummertree​ @onceratheart18​ @karlyfr13s​ @itsfabianadocarmo​ @ouatpost​ @ultraluckycatnd​ @winterbaby89​ @thepirateandhisson​ @xarandomdreamx​ @xsajx​ @captainswan21​

As always, please let me know if you would like to be added or taken off, thank you!

Read on the first two parts on AO3: Look Behind You | Unsuspecting Stranger

Read on AO3 Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three

- - - - -

As promised, the TSA Agent came and collected him from the staff lounge, Killian coiled up his charging cable and turned his phone off. There was nothing he could do, even if he did get a text about something important, and if he didn’t do it now, he was going to forget.

They walked down to the gate and the Agent put him at the front of the queue. The flight attendant checking boarding passes took his ID and boarding pass, and then looked up at him.

“Very good afternoon Mr Jones,” she said, her smile brightening.

“Afternoon,” he replied a little shortly, but that did nothing to dim her smile.

She looked down at his ID and cross checked his name, then handed them back. “Head on through for me, Sir. Have a pleasant flight.”

“Thanks,” he said, giving her a tight-lipped smile as she brushed his fingers with her own. He ignored it and turned to the TSA guy. “Thank you, John,” he said looking up at the hulking man.

“Always happy to help out a Ranger. Say hi next time you’re here, Jones,” he said, his handshake firm when Killian held his own hand out.

“Aye, I will,” Killian said, and grabbed the handle of his suitcase, dragging it behind him as he headed for the plane.

His boarding pass was checked again and he was shown to his seat, he popped open the overhead locker and picked up his suitcase by the side handle, but the wheel caught and it slipped in his haste. He caught it with his bad hand but grunted in pain, gritting his teeth, and trying desperately not to swear because there had been kids in the queue.

He took a deep breath, and tried again, using his wrist to support the case as he guided it into the gap. A hand appeared out of nowhere to help him, and he had to force himself not to snap that he’d got it. If Emma had been here, she’d have helped, and he wouldn’t have questioned it. He managed to smile at the man, who he noticed was in uniform.

“Thank you.”

“No problem, Sir. Fogg, first officer, I spoke to Little earlier and he filled me in. We’ll get you back as quickly as we can,” he said.

Killian was shocked and he was fairly certain it showed on his face.

“My great uncle was a Ranger, a good man,” he explained. “Of course I’m going to do anything I can to get you where you need to be.”

“I appreciate it,” Killian replied, reaching up to scratch behind his ear.

“Let the attendants know if you need anything, and we’ll keep you updated best we can.”

“Thanks,” Killian managed a slightly warmer smile then.

“I’d best get back. Try and relax, we’ll get our job done,” Fogg told him with a polite nod and headed back up the aisle.

Killian sank into his seat, mentally preparing for the hour and twenty minutes from take-off, let alone the half an hour before that happened.

“Hold on, Emma, I’m coming,” he murmured under his breath, wanting to be there so badly it felt like a prayer.

- - - - -

The news Walsh had made Emma find on her phone and mirror to the television had barely shown any coverage of their situation. Walsh and Felix were unnamed, as was the extent of their crimes. She’d endured more of Walsh playing affectionate; with kisses on the cheek and hands in her hair, Emma felt like she was about to snap. She was barely holding back the tears as it was, but much more of this and she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself reacting to him violently.

Will’s knuckles were white and his expression dark from having to watch what Walsh was doing to Emma. But shackled to the bench as he was, there was quite literally nothing he could do.

Walsh’s patience was wearing thin; his touches were becoming less tender and more demanding, which made them easier to deal with, but told Emma that he was close to the end of his tether. They’d been in here since before lunch time, and Emma was hungry, but she didn’t dare ask for anything. Looking around she could see that they were all feeling the toll of their captivity, and she was sure that this was going to get messy if it didn’t end soon.

The only reason she didn’t need the bathroom was because she hadn’t had anything to drink in several hours.

“He’s not planning to get out of here alive, you know,” Will said, breaking the stillness that had settled over the courtroom below the burbling of the television.

Emma looked over at Will to see that he was looking at Felix. She wasn’t the only one, either.

“What are you talking about?” Felix said, looking from Will to Walsh. Clearly confused, if Emma read him right she knew what he was trying to do, undermine their alliance, but Walsh didn’t work the way they expected him to, ever. She didn’t know if this was going to help or make things so much worse.

“What did he promise you?” Will asked simply. “Money, and a way out, right?”

“Quiet, Ranger, who asked you?” Walsh snapped, standing up, letting go of Emma.

Emma took the opportunity to put a little distance between them, take a couple of deep breaths, and collect herself, all the while watching Will.

He looked calm, considering what he was doing, driving a wedge between the two criminals whose alliance had been tentative to begin with. She knew Walsh had grown so desperate for his revenge that he didn’t care how he got it, or who he hurt to do so. He didn’t care what this other guy wanted, but he’d trusted a blind promise that wasn’t going to come.

“This is insane. Let’s just ask for the chopper and the money and get the hell out of here,” Felix said, walking up to the bench and glaring at Walsh.

For a long moment, Walsh stood there, looking down at him.

“I’ll ask for a chopper when I’m good and ready for it. I still haven’t had one of the things I asked for,” Walsh insisted.

“Like what? You got your sandwich while the rest of us are still hungry. You got your TV and insisted on watching the news to see if you’re infamous yet! We’re stuck, we need a way out. Demand one,” Felix insisted.

“I’ll be honest, Foxx, I’m here for one thing. I’m waiting for Ranger Jones to walk through that door…”

“What is your obsession with this guy?” Felix asked.

Will started to laugh. Emma shot him a look, but he didn’t seem able to help himself.

“Shut up!” Walsh snapped at him and turned back to Felix. “When he gets here, and he will, because I have her…” he pointed behind him at Emma. “I’m going to make passionate love to my Princess, while her Ranger boyfriend watches, because then, I will have won. I’m going to make him watch while I take everything from him, just like he took everything from me!”

Felix gaped at Walsh and took a step back from him, shaking his head. He turned away and ran his hand through his hair.

Walsh had a manic, excited gleam in his eyes again, and he grabbed Emma by the upper arm and yanked her out of her seat. Emma tried to pull herself out of his grasp, but his fingers were like a vice – digging into her skin, harsh and unrelenting.

“And you’re going to enjoy every single moment of it, aren’t you?” he said as he gripped her other arm and pulled her harshly into the barrier between them.

Pain blossomed across the tops of her thighs and Emma knew she was going to be horribly bruised tomorrow. She hissed, leaning back from him.

“Aren’t you?!” he shouted, and Emma felt his saliva peppering her skin as he shook her.

He snarled and leaned in, nipped at her neck, and then soothed the bite with his tongue. He licked across her jaw and up the side of her face with a moan.

Emma screamed with defiance, and somehow managed to wrench her arm out of his grip, and before she could think, her fury manifested in the physical act of slapping him across the face as hard as she could.

Walsh’s head snapped to the side with the force of it, and when he turned back to look at her his lip was bleeding. He smirked, his eyes glistening with malice. He released her other arm, but before that could register, his hand was swinging at her face. And Walsh was stronger than her; he hit her so hard that in her unbalanced state she was forced into the front rail of the witness stand.

“Emma!” Will shouted from across the room, but she didn’t hear that nor the rattle of the chains he was pulling against.

Winded and with her ears ringing, Emma fought to suck in breaths as Walsh seethed above her. His hand fisted on the back of her head, and he dragged her back against his chest by her hair. Emma fought to stay upright by gripping the balustrade between them.

“Play nicely, Princess,” he hissed in her ear.

Emma couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid, but she’d had enough. She didn’t want to play his games anymore and she couldn’t stand to have his hands on her for a moment longer. Yet here she was, stuck in his grip again, heels slipping on the wood because of the angle he was holding her at. The only thing holding her up was the arm he’d slipped around her waist.

“Now, you’re going to sit down, shut up, and wait for your boyfriend, or I’m going to shoot his partner. Understand?” Walsh continued in that same sharp, threatening hiss that made her desperate to run as far and as fast as she could.

Emma managed a small nod, even with the tight grip Walsh had on her hair.

“Good Girl,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her neck before roughly pushing her down into her chair again.

Her elbow hit the arm and she hissed in pain, cradling her arm to her chest. It was by no means the worst injury she had sustained at his hands, but in that moment, she felt something inside her break. She curled around her arm a little, shoulders slumping in defeat.

She wanted Killian to get here just so that she knew it was going to be over soon. She didn’t want to fight any more, hurt any more, live in fear for her and Killian’s lives any more, let alone waking in the middle of the night from a nightmare caused by the subconscious thought of what might happen if he got hold of one of the children.

Silent, broken tears tracked down her cheeks.

She could feel more than one person’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look over at Will and see if he was one of them. She couldn’t take the look she knew was going to be on his face when he did. The regret he was going to feel for what he’d said and the rift he’d caused, which had spurred Walsh to take the actions he had.

This wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t hers. She did know that, but she hadn’t made it better. She never had. She’d always fought, when maybe she should have just done as she was told. Killian had always stopped those thoughts in their tracks when they’d started before now, but Killian wasn’t here. Killian was somewhere in the air between here and Houston - at least, she hoped he was. If he wasn’t in the air yet, she didn’t want to think about how much longer she was going to be stuck in here with a man who was never going to give up on getting what he wanted.

She should never have insisted on staying; she should have left with Will. If she hadn’t, he might not have reacted the way he did, and all those people might still be alive. She’d have invited Rosa for lunch, and they’d have had cocktails, and she would have called Killian and gone and picked the kids up from school.

They would know by now, know that she’d been stupid and put herself at risk yet again. They’d be sitting there, waiting to hear news with her mother. Terrified that they weren’t going to see her again and suddenly, she didn’t want Killian to walk through that door. She didn’t want to risk Henry and Alice losing them both, especially not in one day.

She closed her eyes and a fresh wave of tears flowed down her cheeks.

No, she hoped Killian never came through that door, and that Felix and Walsh shot each other out of sheer frustration. It was the best outcome she could hope for, but she knew it was futile to hope that Killian wouldn’t want to do everything he could to save her.

Part of her found that knowledge comforting, the rest of her was terrified.

- - - - -

Killian knew he should probably stop doing his hand exercises, he was at the point of overdoing it, but he had nothing else to do. There was nothing he could do to help Emma right now; he was doing everything he could just to get back to her, and the clouds drifting past beneath him were doing nothing to assuage his agitation.

They were going as fast as they could, and the screen in front of him was getting regular updates from the second officer about their progress and assuring him that they were ahead of schedule.

He looked up as the flight attendant cleared her throat beside him, and forced a tight-lipped smile onto his face. His thundering heart and the tension that was borderline giving him a headache were no reason to be rude.

“Sorry, lass, lost in my own head.”

“No problem, Sir. Would you like any refreshments?” she asked brightly. Her tone made his head throb.

“Just some water, thank you,” he replied.

Her bright expression sagged for a moment with disappointment at his short reply.

“Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?” she probed, sinking into her hip and dropping her shoulders back a little as she passed him the water.

Killian’s jaw ticked in annoyance as he watched what she was trying to do. He was so not in the mood for this. He missed having Emma by his side; her mere presence and his clear affection, even in front of the kids, plus the fact that they were travelling with kids, was normally more than enough to discourage this kind of behaviour.

Even if it wasn’t, Emma had developed some amusing, but subtle ways of marking her territory. Hand massages, leaning into his space to talk to one of the kids, brushing his hair out of his face, ordering the refreshments for the whole family without consulting any of them and getting it right every damn time, asking to borrow his jacket, moving her hair and adjusting her top to show off a mark he’d sucked into her skin, or the less subtle putting her hand on his leg. Once she’d shivered a little and he’d passed her his jacket without even thinking about it when they were checking in. The smile that had lit up her face then was worth every second of the stink eye they’d been given by the attendant.

“A bag of peanuts?” he suggested, with an exasperated wave of his hand as he tucked the water bottle between his thighs to twist the top off it with his good hand.

“Do you need me to open those for you?” she asked with a smile and a flutter of her eyelashes.

“No,” he said firmly, taking the peanuts from her hands and dropping them on the table beside him with a huff.

“Let me know if you need anything else, anything at all,” she finished brightly, as she placed a napkin and a plastic cup on his table, annoyingly unperturbed as she moved on to the next passenger.

Killian tore the bag of peanuts open with his teeth and tipped them onto the table with a sigh.

He didn’t even really like peanuts.

He ate them anyway, along with sipping the water he’d poured into the plastic cup.

It wasn’t until she came back to collect the rubbish that he realised she’d written her number on the napkin. He threw it in the trash bag with the peanut packet without a second thought.

If the way she stopped trying to catch his eye was any indication, she’d finally gotten the hint.

He’d never longed to have a ring on his finger so much in his life.

The revelation didn’t surprise him, not really, but it still gave him something to consider as he sat there. The hand exercises were less frantic now.

If they both survived today, and God damn it they deserved to, they deserved the chance to move on with their lives and forget the bastard who’d put them through all this.

In that moment, he was more determined than ever that this would be the last time Walsh threatened Emma. The last time he held her life in the palm of his hand. The last time Killian was forced to race against time to save the woman he loved. The last time he would hear her scream or cry because some despicable lowlife was trying to…

He took a deep breath as determination settled in his gut. He was going to get there in time. He was going to save Emma. He was not going to let Walsh walk away again.

One way or another, this was going to end today.

- - - - -

Felix was pacing across the width of the courtroom between the bench and the television. He was agitated, and the gun Walsh had given him earlier was now in his hand instead of tucked in the back of his trousers.

Emma watched as his fingers adjusted their grip over and over.

Walsh was ignoring him, staring at the television and huffing every time Felix got in the way of it.

He was close to breaking point, and Emma felt on edge about what was going to happen when he did.

She didn’t know much about Felix - just what Rosa had told her. He’d never been cruel, and even with his burglary gang they’d never been violent. The reason for his prolonged incarceration was simply because of the monetary value of the burglary.

Rosa’s reasons for divorce were simple. He’d spent almost their entire marriage lying to her about where his wealth had come from. Irreconcilable differences. Emma could see why. Rosa was good, was kind and generous, and maybe she’d been a little naïve not to have noticed anything amiss, but she’d been in love with him.

Once upon a time the thief in front of her had swept a kind young woman off her feet enough that she’d married him.

Felix couldn’t be all bad. She couldn’t believe that the man in front of her was somehow capable of that level of deceit.

He wasn’t Neal.

At least, Emma had to hope that he was enough not like Neal and enough not like Walsh that he would decide that this should stop.

But would he decide that before it was too late?

When the chips were down, would he make the right choice or the easy choice?

Emma had no idea, but apparently she wasn’t going to have to wait long to find out.

“Enough!” Felix snapped. “They aren’t going to say your fucking name, or mine!”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know you’ve kidnapped the daughter of the Ranger Captain, and that if anyone is going to keep anything quiet to protect his daughter, it’s him.”

Emma scowled, and Felix rolled his eyes.

“We’re just going to be nameless, faceless criminals because you chose the wrong people to fuck with, Ozman. This isn’t going to be a glorious retribution on your enemies!” he shouted, waving his gun around in the same kind of deranged manner Walsh had been earlier. “And her, what did she ever really do to you?” he asked, pointing his gun at Emma.

“Watch where you’re pointing that,” Walsh said calmly.

Far too calmly in Emma’s opinion.

“You’re the one who keeps threatening her!” Felix snapped. “Seriously, what has she done to piss you off? Reject your oh so charming advances? I’m not fucking surprised. You know what? I think that judge was wrong, you are insane.” He laughed then, and Emma shifted in her chair, putting some distance between herself and Walsh and whatever was about to go down between the two criminals.

“And I’ve played along with it because I was stupid enough to think that a man like you might actually have a get out plan, but you don’t, do you? He was right, wasn’t he? You don’t care if you get out of here or not as long as you feel like you’ve won! Well you won’t, and this madness has gone on long enough…”

His arm swung up and the gun pointed at Walsh.

Felix pulled the trigger, but instead of the loud bang they were all expecting, the gun simply clicked.

Walsh had given Felix an unloaded gun.

Walsh smirked and reached into his pocket. He pulled his fisted hand back out and then opened it, letting the bullets that had been in Felix’s gun roll off his fingers and hit the wooden counter one at a time.

Each clack made Emma flinch.

There was a long moment of silence, and Felix’s eyes moved slowly up from where the bullets had landed to Walsh’s face. He swallowed nervously and neither of them moved. It was like something out of the Old West, Walsh waiting for Felix to make his next move, fingers twitching as he longed to reach for the gun he’d left on the other side of the desk in front of him to where Emma was sitting.

He would never understand just how much she longed to reach for it and do what Felix had tried and failed to do.

But maybe he did, because it was certainly out of her reach.

Everyone was watching, waiting with baited breath for something to happen.

Felix turned on his heel and slipped a little in his haste to run through the gate, but Walsh, with a gleam in his eyes, snatched up the gun and took aim.

It was either a bad shot, or a good one; Emma still wasn’t sure of his skills yet, having only seen him shoot people at close range before, but Felix toppled forward with a scream, clutching at his leg.

Walsh moved quickly then, vaulting over the front of the bench once more and stalking down the middle of the room to where his prey had fallen.

“You should have checked the gun, Felix. I knew then you were a fucking moron,” he said, his posture relaxed, sounding almost casual as he looked down at the whimpering thief.

Felix tried to push himself away from Walsh, screaming as he aggravated the wound in his leg. Walsh laughed and stepped on his ankle to stop him from going anywhere.

“You could have walked out of here, Felix, with the rest of the men. I’d have let you go… But I thought maybe you’d be a useful recruit to my army. Turns out you’re just as useless as the idiots I worked with the first time I kidnapped my Princess,” he said with a sigh.

Emma almost felt sorry for Felix. He’d gone about it all the wrong way and now… Walsh was going to kill him. Or not… and Emma wasn’t sure which was worse. No one deserved the kind of agony Killian was dealing with everyday.

Well… She couldn’t say she’d stop anyone doing it to Walsh… but then did that make her as bad as him, or was she simply that done with his insane bullshit?

“Kill me then,” he hissed. Forcing himself to look up at Walsh. “Finish it!”

Walsh hummed, looked at the gun and then down at Felix. “You know what?” he asked, and Emma watched as he smirked, crouching down next to Felix. “I don’t think I will…” he brought the gun to rest on the thigh of Felix’s uninjured leg. “Beg me not to…” he whispered, the sound carrying in the otherwise quiet room.

Felix swallowed and dropped his gaze. “Please, don’t I’m sor…” his words were cut off with a scream as another gunshot rang through the room.

Emma gripped the arms of her chair tightly, her heart pounding.

One bullet on the bailiff, one embedded in the ceiling, the doctor, the lawyer, the judge. Two more on the men who’d tried to take the room back, and now two on Felix… Was he out…? Would he need time to reload…? Could she manage to rush him before he did…?

What gun was that? Could she even remember how big the magazine was?

Walsh pushed Felix onto his back, and a fresh cry of agony ripped through the air. He shoved the gun into his stomach. For a moment, Emma thought he was going to shoot him in the stomach.

“No, I’ve already wasted more bullets on you than I should have,” he mused aloud before pulling back, standing and turning away. But before he started back towards the bench, he turned once more and kicked Felix in the side and then the stomach when he curled in on himself.

On the bench, Emma’s phone started ringing.

“Who is it, Princess?”

“My… my dad…” she replied, her voice shaking.

“Well, do answer it, won’t you?” he said, almost sounding kind.

Emma swiped the green button.

“Ozman, what’s going on?”

“Just teaching an insubordinate soldier a lesson or two,” he said pleasantly as he swaggered back towards the front of the room. “He’s just a petty criminal, nothing to concern yourself with.”

“Is he alive?” David asked calmly.

“For now,” Walsh said with a shrug.

Emma felt sick. She knew he was callous, cruel, but to speak of how Felix’s life might ebb out of him before this was over…

“Which is more than I can say for Ranger Scarlet if Jones doesn’t hurry the fuck up!” he shouted, impatient anger suddenly pouring out of him in a torrent. “I will start by doing some very serious damage, and then he will die if Jones isn’t here to stop it,” he declared. He snatched Emma’s phone up off the desk and slung it at the wall above Will’s head.

To his credit, Will didn’t flinch at all. He stared Walsh down with a hardness in his gaze that Emma had never seen before. It was unnerving, but maybe Will was as done with Walsh and his psychotic stalker insanity as she was.

As Emma looked at her best friend, she felt the tears spilling down her cheeks. Will had been in her life since they were in elementary school. She was old enough now that a friendship that had lasted that long was rare, and she’d stopped imagining her life without her best friend years ago. Losing him would be as bad as losing a flesh and blood brother; it would break her in a way she couldn’t even begin to think about.

She couldn’t let Walsh hurt anyone else she cared about.

Desperation welled up inside her, but she didn’t know what to say, what to do. She should have paid more attention, if only she knew how many rounds Walsh had left in that gun.

- - - - -

The cabin crew held everyone else in their seats, letting him off first. The pilot and first and second officers were in the doorway to the cockpit as he paused.

“Thank you,” he said, his heart racing as he prepared for the sprint through the airport.

“Anytime,” the pilot said with a nod. Killian was running up the tunnel, through the door at the other end and across the terminal. He had to wait as he reached the elevators, and took the opportunity to turn his phone on. There was a message from Graham, an update from David, and Killian hit ‘call’ on the message from the former, knowing he would be the one picking him up.

“I’m right out front, blue lights all the way to the courthouse,” Graham said the moment he picked up.

“Great,” Killian replied, hanging up as the doors pinged open and everyone piled in.

His foot tapped in agitation as the lift moved slowly upwards. The moment the doors were open, he was walking, his brisk pace carrying him through the airport, past baggage claim, through nothing to declare and out into the arrivals lounge.

Every footstep was bringing him closer to Emma. Every heartbeat was a moment closer to seeing her again, to ending this nightmare.

Graham was just inside the airport door, taking Killian’s suitcase without asking, and heading for his truck. He threw the suitcase in the trunk, and Killian wrenched open the door, climbing into the passenger seat and dumping his satchel in the footwell before putting his seatbelt on.

Graham hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, flipping a switch to turn on the flashing lights and siren before pulling out into the traffic, which hurriedly parted ways for him.

“Glove Compartment,” he grunted.

Killian looked across at him with a raised eyebrow, but Graham had his eyes on the road. Frowning, he opened the hatch and then understanding flooded his face.

He picked up one item and secured it on his chest and then picked up the other, weighing it in his hand. The familiar weight settled into both his hand and soothed his racing heart just a little. He didn’t feel half so useless now, and he now had the means to end this once and for all.

Graham’s driving was impeccable as they raced through the streets. Killian started carefully checking over his gun, taking his time with his already agitated hand to do it properly, as he recalled the last time he’d been racing to Emma’s aid with this gun in his hands. Finally he checked the magazine, counting the seventeen nine by nineteen millimetre rounds held within.

“I cleaned it for ya, needed something ta do…” Graham informed him over the sound of the sirens.

Killian looked across at him and studied him for a moment. Graham had always been a little more distant than some of his other colleagues.

“I don’t say it, I know,” the man continued. “But she’s as much a sister ta me as she is ta Will,” He swallowed, glancing in his mirrors as he took a turn. “Do us all a favour, kill the bastard.”

Killian was a little stunned. If anything, Graham was the least bloodthirsty of all of them, but to know that he was as outraged by Ozman’s behaviour as the rest of them… Killian nodded, his colleagues' support of his own mindset was all the encouragement he needed as a plan started to form in his mind.

The sooner they got there, the better.

Killian wasn’t going to give Walsh another chance to hurt him or his family. This was the end of the line.

But he needed a plan. He wasn’t so lost to wrath that he was going to walk in there without one.

- - - - -

Felix had stopped whimpering, just gasping for breath now as he bled out in the aisle. Walsh was back on his ‘throne’, his fingers dancing up and down the inside of Emma’s arm, making her skin crawl.

“I’m done waiting,” Walsh said, his voice low and dark as he pushed himself out of the judge’s chair and his gaze turned on Will.

Emma felt her heart still as the world around her seemed to slow.

“No, Walsh, please…” she managed to force out, her voice hoarse with lack of hydration and fear.

He turned to look at her, his movements slow and calculating as he seemed to consider. “No?”

“It’s alright, Emma,” Will said, sounding resigned.

She was blinking back tears as she looked between them. She couldn’t watch Walsh do the kinds of things he did to Killian to Will instead. She couldn’t go through that again.

Walsh leapt over the wooden structure around them once more and ripped the power cable out of the back of the television before shoving it aside. It wobbled on its stand and fell to the floor with a crash as Walsh turned to look at her.

“Get up,” he said, and when Emma wasn’t quick enough, he pointed his gun at Will. “Get up!”

Emma stood, hands shaking, and when Walsh crooked his finger at her she swallowed, her mouth dry, and stepped out of the witness stand.

“Emma…” Will said, his voice choked and when she looked over at him, she could see the desperation in his eyes.

“Hurry it up, Princess,” he spat.

Emma walked faster, crossing the distance between them in a few strides. She stopped in front of him, and took a deep breath before looking up at his face. The twisted smile on his lips made her stomach twist and she was fighting the urge to bolt for the door.

“Good girl. Now, on your knees for your King, Princess,” he said, his fingers grazing tenderly across her jaw.

She couldn’t breathe. What was she doing? How was this helping anything? Walsh seemed certain there were still bullets in his gun. She dropped her gaze, trying to see what make and model it was.

Suddenly, his hand was around her neck, nails digging into her skin as he snarled in her face. Her hands flew to his wrist, trying to pull his fingers off her neck.

“Do I have to remind you what’s at stake here, Princess? All of these lives are in my hands, and all I want you to do is get on your knees!”

Emma was blinking rapidly as she tried to suck in breaths. Will was shouting, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. With a frustrated yell, Walsh threw her to the floor. She cried out in pain as she crashed into the marble floor, her arms only just coming up in time to stop her head hitting the floor. The angle she hit the floor at forced all the breath out of her lungs, and when she tried to breathe in, she felt like she was sucking air through a straw. Her head spun, dizzy and disoriented. The world around her sounded like it was muffled by water.

It took a couple of moments before the voices broke through. Will shouting her name, panicked and desperate and almost screaming, begging her to move. She choked on the small amount of air she was managing to suck in as Walsh grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to her knees. She seemed to have lost control over her body, unable to move her hands to try and stop him as pain seared across her scalp.

For a moment he knelt behind her, holding her against him, and the all-encompassing feeling of revulsion gave way to numbness. She suddenly felt like she wasn’t there, like there was something suddenly stopping her feeling, or at least making the discomfort fade to a buzz. His hands were there, but at the same time, she couldn’t really feel them.

“Take off the jacket,” he murmured in her ear. For a moment, she didn’t move. She didn’t have the strength, or she couldn’t make her arms move; she wasn’t sure, but her recalcitrance pissed Walsh off. He pointed his gun at Will. “Take the jacket off!” he screamed in her ear.

She didn’t flinch, but she did push her jacket off her shoulders and shrug it to the floor.

“Now your blouse,” he hissed, his tongue darting out to taste the shell of her ear. This time because her hands were already moving it didn’t take her so long to comply. She started to undo the buttons of her top, and Walsh swept her hair aside, pressing kisses to her neck and shoulder as the neckline loosened. “Mmm Princess, you smell amazing,” he murmured against her skin.

The hand not holding the gun groped her breasts, parting the material of her shirt as she undid more buttons. He groaned into her neck, and Emma could hear Will fighting against the cuffs chaining him to the wall, but the sounds washed over her. She couldn’t even see the women sitting in the seats on either side of the aisle as her vision tunnelled until all she could see was the bar holding the door shut.

It didn’t matter that this time he was making her expose herself rather than doing the job with his own hands, or that he was making her do it in front of a room full of people. If she was any one of those women, she wouldn’t be looking. Walsh wasn’t making any of them look; he hadn’t threatened any of them more than in passing when trying to get her to do what he wanted. She was protecting them, and she hoped that was enough that even if they had been regarding his treatment of her like one might look at a car crash, they were looking away now.

Her shirt undone, Emma’s hands fell to her sides again, and Walsh swept it open so that it hung on the outside of her breasts. He hummed as his hand trailed up her stomach, clearly intending to take his time. His hips rolled against her, and she could feel his hard length pressing between her ass cheeks. He moaned, his hand splayed on her stomach, pulling her back against him.

He nuzzled into the side of her head and hummed in her ear as his hand moved down, pressing her pelvis back into his as he rubbed himself against her, rocking his hips and starting to moan louder. The arm holding his gun wrapped around her waist and pulled her tighter against him as his other hand moved again, pushing her bra out of the way, and closing his hand over her naked flesh.

Was that movement she could see through the tiny gap in the door? Did she dare hope that something was happening out there?

Apparently, she couldn’t help it, and with that spark of hope the reality of the situation broke through the numbness and hit her full throttle. Her bottom lip trembled, she sucked in a shaky breath. She could not, would not scream. She could not, would not fight him. She could not risk him hurting anyone else.

Emma closed her eyes and let the tears flow, because now there was nothing else she could do.

[asfaltics]

givings away

  Hawthorne was a hearty devourer of books, and in certain moods of mind it made very little difference what the volume before him happened to be. An old play or an old newspaper sometimes gave him wondrous great content, and he would ponder the sleepy, uninteresting sentences as if they contained immortal mental aliment. He once told me he found       1   givings away in some       2 gestures and beckonings, and givings away of small bunches of early violets       3 licenses, and bridesmaids, and carriages, and givings-away, and       4   (or “givings away”), a term derived from the Chinook jargon word potlatch, “to give”       5 he told me of Lamb’s “givings away”       6 the thefts, the robberies, the givings away. There was no one who would not rather have had all those things in flames       7   these givings away, as well as       8 givings away of [ ] heartsease and rue       9 here are their givings away [ ] all       10   standing there a minute And holding the thrifty man’s book of “givings-away”       11 “givings-away” in one hand, and say:       12 There are these two givings-away. What are the two?       13   across the found time between his givings away to street, or ask favors of       14 the world, with society, with the entourage consisting for him, in its most pressing form of, say, [ ] this challenge, as I have called it, in some way that will sort of meet it without givings-away. These three       15 would Two Givings-Away.       16   You know, we all make deals, I suppose, in terms of how we think about the process of our aging. It’s a series of givings away, a making       17  

sources

1 ex James T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors (1871; 1872) : 62 (same source, different edition, for entry 6 below) 2 ex Jabez D(elano). Hammond. Life and Times of Silas Wright, Late Governor of the State of New York (Syracuse, 1848) : 552 3 ex The Daisydingle Sunday-school (Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1849) : 22 a “Sunday School Reward Book” 4 ex chapter 12, “A Compact with the Evil One” in “Stoke Dotterell; or, the Liverpool Apprentice,” in The New Monthly Magazine 105 (London, 1855) : 323 5 ex Robert Brown (1842-1895 *), The Races of Mankind : Being a Popular Description of the characteristics, manners and customs of the principal varieties of the human family. Vol. 1 (of 2; 1873) : 75 6 ex James T(homas). Fields (1817-81 *), “‘Barry Cornwall’ and some of his friends,” in Yesterdays with Authors (1871; 1879) : 359 7 ex Cicero’s oration for Sex. Roscius Amerinus, the text closely rendered and illustrated with short notes by an Oxford graduate. (Oxford, 1880) : 9 8 inscrutable OCR misread (snippet view only), Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for the Year (1880?) : 119 9 OCR cross-column misread, involving reviews of two books, Sir John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life (London, 1887) and James R(ussell). Lowell, Heartsease and Rue (London, 1888), in The Oxford Magazine (May 23, 1888) : 379 on heartsease (or wild pansy (Viola tricolor), also known as Johnny Jump up, &c, &c.) on rue (Ruta graveolens, commonly known as rue, common rue or herb-of-grace...) 10 ex statement of C. W. Bennett, in Hearings before the Committee on Territories of the United States Senate in relation to the Bill (S. 1306) for the local government of Utah Territory, and to provide for the election of certain officers in said territory. (Washington, D.C.; February 11, 1892) 155 11 ex snippet view (only), Commercial West 18 (1910) : 28 12 ex “Thrift,” by Rev. Robert J. Burdette, Pastor Emeritus Temple Baptist Church, Los Angeles, California,in “Savings Bank Section,” Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Convention of the American Bankers’ Association... (Held at Los Angeles, California, October 3 to 7, 1910) : 535-538 13 ex “Chapter on Gifts, the thirteenth,” The Anguttara Nikāya of the Sutta Pitaka, Eka Duka and Tika Tika Nipāta; published by The London Pali Text Society in 1885; translated by Edmund Rowland Jayetilleke Gooneratne. (Galle, Ceylon, 1913) : 114 same volume, these errata — for passions read fascination for place read state read any other state for at least read not after cut read off for into read after for does read does not omit, by after blind read man after sandal read wood for error read ignorance after Him insert a full stop 14 ex “In North Carolina’s Calcium Light” (series), Robert Lilly Gray (1877-1945?), “‘Jule’ Carr, the Man—A Pen Picture,” in Sky-land 1:7 (April 1914) : 401-406 a literary magazine promoting a vision of “white” culture and civilization; Julian Shakespeare Carr (1845-1924), was a North Carolina industrialist, philathropist, and Ku Klux Klan supporter; aided (the Methodist and Quaker affiliated) Trinity College, that would become Duke University on Carr’s land in Durham. (much) more at wikipedia aside — it may be that usage of the expression “Sky-land” to denote that region of western North Carolina originated in a travel sketch entitled Land of the Sky (1876) by Christian Reid (1846-1920 *); her characterization was subsequently used to advertise a railroad extension to the area. 15 Henry James, The Ivory Tower (unfinished novel; 1917) : 330 16 OCR cross-column misread/jump, at “Crowns Coronets Courtiers” in The Sketch : A Journal of Art and Actuality 104 (October 9, 1918) :40 weekly magazine, devoted to “high society and the aristocracy” during the years 1893-1959 (wikipedia) list of issues available via hathitrust 17 ex Mark Singer, “David Milch’s Third Act — Despite what dementia has stolen from the cerebral creator of “Deadwood,” it has given his work a new sense of urgency.” The New Yorker (May 27, 2019 issue) : here full passage — “You know, we all make deals, I suppose, in terms of how we think about the process of our aging. It’s a series of givings away, a making peace with givings away. I had thought, as many or most people do, that I was in an earlier stage of givings away than it turns out I am. It’s kind of a relentless series of adjustments to what you can do, in particular the way you can’t think any longer. Your inability to sustain a continuity of focus. And those are accumulated deletions of ability. And you adjust—you’d better adjust, or you adjust whether you want to or not.”  

[ovymedia]

Quotes to remind you to take adventures in your life

When was the last time you went on an adventure? Perhaps these quotes will help jog your memory.

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart

“Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop

“When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.” – A.A. Milne

“Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.” – Irving Wallace

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – J.R.R. Tolkein

“I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” – Eric Roth

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

“Oh, the places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” – Ernest Hemingway

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

“The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” – T.S. Eliot

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.” – T.E. Lawrence

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

“You are not in the mountains. The mountains are in you.” – John Muir

“I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.” – Andrew Garfield

“How wild it was, to let it be.” – Cheryl Strayed

“Stop staring at mountains. Climb them instead, yes, it’s a harder process but it will lead you to a better view.” – Anonymous

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”” – Sylvia Plath

“The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.” – Jeanne Moreau

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more that what we could learn from books.” – John Lubbock

“The most dangerous thing you can do in life is play it safe.” – Casey Neistat

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary

For more adventure-packed content, check out www.ovymedia.com.

[rachellescheid]

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." - Sir John Lubbock

[luckywilliams]

Ann Todd: A ‘peaches and cream stunner’ of a film star from Northwich.

Dorothy Annie Todd was born on January 21st, 1907, in Hartford, Cheshire, and under the shorter, presumably more glamorous stage name of Ann Todd, she went on to become a film star and actress famous across the world. She had an acting career which spanned the best part of 60 years, from the 1930’s to the early 1990’s, and which encompassed films, stage and TV. During this time, Ann met, and worked with, many of the most famous people in movie history, including Alexander Korda, Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick, Gregory Peck, Sir Ralph Richardson, and many others. She also starred in a number of films directed by David Lean, one of the greatest film directors of all time, and became Lean’s wife in 1949.

Despite Ann Todd’s distinguished career, and her stellar connections with some of the leading film and acting legends of the 20th Century, little has been said or written about her in the town and county of her birth. It is therefore appropriate that Ann now features as one of the on-line ‘Hidden Women of Cheshire’ in a promotional campaign currently being run by the Mid Cheshire Community Rail Partnership (see www.amazingwomenbyrail.org.uk.) Ann Todd certainly led a remarkable and colourful life, which definitely deserves to be less ‘hidden’, particularly in the town of her birth.

There is some ambiguity about the year of her birth in Hartford. – Many biographies indicate that she was born in 1909. However, the 1911 Census, and other registry evidence, clearly shows that she was born two years earlier, in 1907, and was christened in March 1907. Like many in the acting profession (both past and present) it was perhaps best to be a little coy about one’s true age. Ann Todd’s slim frame, good looks and comparatively small stature (she was 5’4’’) meant she always looked quite young. Indeed, possibly to Ann’s delight at the time of her marriage to film director David Lean, in 1949, she was described in at least one American newspaper report as being 29 years old, rather than the more accurate age of 42!

The future film star, Ann Todd, was born into a well-to-do, affluent middle class family, in Hartford, Northwich (population 850 in the census of 1901). Though Ann was born in Hartford, her sales manager father, Thomas, was a Scot from Aberdeen, and her mother, Constance, was a Londoner. By 1911, the Todd family had moved to London, probably to advance Thomas’s career in sales management, and Ann had acquired a younger brother, Harold, who went on to achieve fame as a writer of comedies such as ‘No, my Darling Daughter’ and ‘A Pair of Briefs’ which were commercially very successful during most of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The family still seem to have been very affluent in London, and could afford to accommodate two live-in female teenage servants, and Thomas’s adult sister, Ethel, within the household.

Harold was packed off to school at the exclusive Marlborough College, and then undertook a degree at Cambridge University. Ann Todd went to school in Sussex, but acting seems to have been in her blood from an early age, and she was soon enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, specialising in the interesting combination of elocution, drama and fencing.

It didn’t take long for Ann Todd’s star potential to be noticed, and by her late 20’s she had been signed up by the British film mogul Alexander Korda. She was a key actress in a number of the films he produced in the 1930’s, such as ‘Things to Come’ and ‘South Riding’. Ann’s big break, in terms of worldwide fame, came in 1945, when she starred opposite the British matinee idol, James Mason, in a film called ‘The Seventh Veil’. Her performance as a troubled concert pianist drew rave reviews in America. The film critic of the Los Angeles Times, for example, commented that she ‘carried the film’, and it was American film critics at this time who first dubbed the Northwich born actress as the ‘pocket Greta Garbo’ because of her distinctive style, looks and diminutive stature. Hollywood, in the form of the great David O. Selznick (the driving force behind the film production of Gone with the Wind) soon came calling, and Ann was offered the largest film contract ever offered to an English actress at that time – probably worth around a million dollars all told - which was an astronomical sum in the late 1940’s.

With Selznick’s backing, in 1947, Ann starred opposite the Hollywood screen legend Gregory Peck, in the Alfred Hitchcock directed film “The Paradine Case”. Much has been written about Hitchcock’s preference for directing blonde actresses such as Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren, and Ann Todd certainly fitted in with the look and style of these other actresses. Tippi’s relationship with Hitchcock, in the film “The Birds” certainly seems to have been fraught. However, no hostilities between Hitchcock and Todd seem to have surfaced. Indeed, Ann Todd starred once again for Hitchcock in the 1950’s, in an episode of his successful U.S. TV series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”.

The Paradine Case wasn’t as commercially successful as hoped, but America never lost its enthusiasm for Ann Todd. All aspects of her life, personal and professional, continued to be of interest to U.S. reporters, and features about her were carried throughout America, in newspapers from Lubbock in Texas to California, Utah, and Albany in New York. In 1957, William Glover of the New York press described 50 year old Ann as being “a damsel of allure” as she prepared to make her debut on Broadway. Not surprisingly, she was given a very laudatory obituary in the Los Angeles Times, on the day following her death in London in May 1993.

Ann Todd’s career in British films is often undersold. We are told, for example, that she specialised in playing rather stoic, put upon, post-war British housewives. – Anyone that watches her 1950 performance as the morally ambiguous probable Victorian murderess, Madeleine (in David Lean’s film “Madeleine”) must realise that she could play a wide range of roles with subtlety and distinction.

In fact, there were many different aspects to the Northwich born actress’s career. For a start, she seems to have recognised the significance of television, as a medium for acting and drama, from the very beginning. She played a leading character in the late 1930’s British television serial “Ann and Harold”, which was produced during the pre-WW2 days when Britain was pioneering the introduction of television (an experiment abruptly ended by the onset of war). In fact, many experts regard ‘Ann and Harold’ as being the first ever attempt at producing what today would be called ‘soap opera’. Ann Todd’s involvement in television also extended to America, where she appeared not only for Hitchcock, but also in John Frankenheimer’s 1960 TV movie adaptation of Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro,’ alongside Hollywood movie star Robert Ryan. Following many an actor’s adage about never giving up or retiring, Ann continued to appear in TV productions, such as Michael Gambon’s 1992 Maigret series, until she was well into her 80’s.

Ann was well versed in the challenges of appearing before live theatre audiences: In 1957, she made her Broadway debut (thus escaping the pressures of a traumatic divorce from David Lean) by starring as a wealthy American socialite in a production of the little known play “The Four Winds”. Back in England, during 1954-5, she took on some of the leading female Shakespearean roles, during a complete season of acting with the Old Vic Theatre Company. All this just goes to show how accomplished and versatile Ann Todd actually was as an actress. Not content with film, stage and TV performances, the multi-talented Cheshire born actress also developed a highly successful career as a travel writer and documentary producer, in the 1960’s, with programme credits to her name such as “Thunder of the Gods” (1966) and “Thunder of the Kings” (1967).

In many respects, Ann Todd grew up in Northwich, London and Sussex to become an archetypal Hollywood movie queen. – She had wealth, good looks, and a prodigious amount of talent. Her private life was also stormy, to say the least, and filled the gossip columns of papers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was married and divorced three times. Her first husband, Victor Malcolm, was the grandson of Lillie Langtry, the famous music hall artiste and mistress of Edward VII. In an era when there were no ‘blameless’ divorce cases, Ann’s 1949 divorce from Nigel Tangye, her second husband, was particularly bitter. Ann left Tangye to live with and then marry the film director David Lean, who was Tangye’s first cousin. Tangye sued Lean for $160,000, largely as a consequence of his ‘misconduct’ with Ann. This financial claim was thrown out by the divorce court judge, but Tangye was granted custody of Ann  Francesca (Ann Todd and Tangye’s daughter). Happiness eluded Ann Todd in her third marriage to David Lean, as well. They were living apart from each other within 5 years, and Ann was granted a divorce, on the grounds of Lean’s desertion, in 1957. None of this personal trauma seems to have adversely affected either Lean or Todd. David Lean went on to achieve further cinematic immortality with his direction of the film “Lawrence of Arabia” in 1962. Ann Todd immediately threw herself into a starring role in a Broadway production. It was here, in her dressing room, in 1957, whilst preparing for her role in “The Four Winds” that the admiring American film and theatre critic, William Glover, interviewed Ann, and referred to the now 50 year old Northwich born actress as a “real peaches and cream stunner” of a film star. In terms of her energy, zeal and talent for acting, William Glover’s summary was just about right.

Adrian L. Bridge, April 2018.