Random Notes, 62b

1. One of the curious aspects of our time is the low esteem for farmers common in many circles, something not new in history. To be a farmer, however, requires not only hard work but versatile talents. Over the years, I have known of, or heard about, various persons who decided to “retire” into a life of farming, ex-professors, or various professionals. Almost always, they are quickly wiped out. They lack the knowledge of soils, weather, mechanical repairing, and more. A farmer in his work has as many skills as any professional man, and they are not learned overnight.

2. I read recently Peter Bushell’s London’s Secret History (1983); secret here means unknown or forgotten bits associated with different areas of London.

One strange item concerned Laura Bell, who, more than a century ago, was a woman evangelist. She married a well-to-do Englishman, who died in 1887. In earlier years, she had been London’s “most expensive courtesan.” Two years before she met her husband, the Nepalese prime minister had paid $250,000 English pounds for one night with her! In those days, that was a great fortune (p. 11).

The mother of the Rothschild brothers was dying at age 98, and she asked her doctor to help her. He answered, “Madame, What can I do? I cannot make you young again.” Her answer was this: “But I want to continue to grow old” (p. 23).

The Duchess of Buckingham was an illegitimate daughter of James II. Walpole said of her that she was “more mad with pride than any mercer’s wife in Bedlam” (i.e., any insane woman). Her reaction to a sermon on sin was this: “It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth.” On her deathbed, she made her ladies promise that none would sit down in her presence until the doctor pronounced her dead (p. 97).

In 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh, on facing execution, ran his finger over the blade of the axe, and he declared it to be “a sharp and fair execution to cure all my diseases.” He refused a blindfold, saying, “think you I fear the shadow of the axe when I fear not the axe itself?” When he put his head on the block, he was told that he was facing the wrong way, and he answered, “What matter how the head lie so that the heart be right?” (p. 114).

I was in my ‘teens when I first read Raleigh’s moving poem, written apparently the night before his execution:

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

Earlier, Raleigh had been a brazen sinner, but he became in time a faithful Christian and died as one.

3. History routinely is rewritten by the Left to make itself the advocates of all that is good. But Alain Borer, no conservative, reports in Rimbaud in Abyssinia (1984), that, from the start, colonialism was championed not only by the imperialists but also by the Left as the means of exporting progress, Revolution, education, and human rights (p. 150). At present, by means of foreign aid, military intervention, and “advisors,” this program of the Left is still in operation. The new colonialism denounces the old but is no less oppressive in its demands of the modern pseudo-democratic colonies.

4. I was reminded last night of something from about 50 or more years ago, when I was on the Indian Reservation, at an elevation of 5,400 feet. At first, we were able to have milk only by buying it from a nearby liquor dealer who kept a cow. In the spring, the cow ate wild onions, and the milk reeked of the onion odor.

The Indian children, waiting for the school bus, would eat the wild onion stalks, far, far stronger in odor than the garden variety. The classrooms would then reek of onion breath, driving the teachers to a nervous distraction!

5. When I was a child, we lacked many things, but I was really born rich because of my Christian parents and relatives. I felt that I was in the lap of luxury, a privileged child.

I recall vividly to this day my father’s table prayers for all of us, and also his use at times of prayers in Kurrahpar, the old, classical Armenian. They still resonate, with all their ancient majesty of confident faith, in my mind.

Once, in the 1940s, I asked my father to send the texts to me, to memorize and to use. But I could not do it: it was and remains a majestic memory of my father and reserved for him.

6. Twenty years ago, a fine young man began to attend our monthly study class here for college students. Some came from a hundred miles away. One of them has since been very active in astronomy and has produced Journey to Mizar: The Backyard Astronomer’s Compendium and Field Guide to the Big Dipper (published by Ruhe Company, P.O. Box 1034, Rocklin, California 95677-1034). I am not an astronomer, but I know that whatever Tim, an architect, does, he does very well.

7. Dorothy and I, and many others of our age, were reared by parents who insisted on everything placed on our dinner plates being entirely eaten, whether we liked it or not. Times have changed, and parents and children waste food casually, which is painful to see. It becomes a personal trial when we go to a restaurant overly generous with their helpings, so much so that to eat everything would make us ill. We try to avoid such places.

8. F. D. Maurise was an important person in English religious circles in the nineteenth century, but his preaching apparently left many perplexed. Aubrey deVere said of Maurice that listening to him preach was like “eating pea-soup with a fork.”

9. Not too long before the year 1000 A.D., a pagan Magyar leader, Geza, was persuaded by his Christian wife Sarolta to be baptized by German prelates. But Geza, while praying to Christ thereafter, and taking communion, continued to sacrifice to pagan gods,” saying that he was rich enough to serve two different gods” (Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000, p. 170). The conversion of Europe was slow because the deeply rooted paganism of its peoples took centuries to overcome. Atrocities were commonplace, and not even ail of Europe was nominally converted until after 1000 A.D. At the time, human sacrifice was still practiced in many areas. Much of Europe was the habitation of barbarians. A manual for manners told people not to break wind while at the table, nor to spit on the floor, nor to pick their noses, nor to look for lice in their hair. Men were told “not to fondle the breasts of the women next to them” (Erdoes, p. 79). The good old days?

Meanwhile, in Spain Arab rulers lived in great luxury in palaces built by imported Byzantine architects and craftsmen. Abd-er-Rahman had in his harem 6,315 women, counting his favorite wife, and these were served by 3,350 pages and eunuchs (p. 48). Of course, the common people who paid for this lived poorly. When you consider the glories of Moorish Spain, remember that the people had a high price to pay when the ruler alone had 9,665 in his household to serve simply his sexual “needs.” European tyrants, at their worst, were never so expensive!