J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a "fairy play" about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. Although he continued to write Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, is credited with popularising the name Wendy. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June 1913, a member of the Order of Merit in the 1922 New Year Honours. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.
James Matthew Barrie was born in Angus, to a conservative Calvinist family. His father David Barrie was a modestly successful weaver, his mother Margaret Ogilvy assumed her deceased mother's household responsibilities at the age of eight. Barrie was the ninth child of ten, all of whom were schooled in at least the three Rs in preparation for possible professional careers, his siblings were: Alexander, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, David Ogilvy, Sarah and Margaret. He drew attention to himself with storytelling, he only grew to 5 ft 31⁄2 in. According to his 1934 passport; when he was 6 years old, Barrie's next-older brother David died the day before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to", wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy "and I said in a little lonely voice,'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'"
Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe, works by fellow Scotsman Walter Scott, The Pilgrim's Progress. At the age of 8, Barrie was sent to the Glasgow Academy in the care of his eldest siblings Alexander and Mary Ann, who taught at the school; when he was 10, he continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At 14, he left home for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of Mary Ann, he became a voracious reader, was fond of Penny Dreadfuls and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. At Dumfries, he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates "in a sort of Odyssey, long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan", they formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy following a scathing moral denunciation from a clergyman on the school's governing board.
Barrie knew. However, his family attempted to persuade him to choose a profession such as the ministry. With advice from Alexander, he was able to work out a compromise: he would attend a university, but would study literature. Barrie enrolled at the University of Edinburgh where he wrote drama reviews for the Edinburgh Evening Courant, he graduated and obtained an M. A. on 21 April 1882. Following a job advertisement found by his sister in The Scotsman, he worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist on the Nottingham Journal, he returned to Kirriemuir. He submitted a piece to the St. James's Gazette, a London newspaper, using his mother's stories about the town where she grew up; the editor "liked that Scotch thing" so well. They served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls, A Window in Thrums, The Little Minister; the stories depicted the "Auld Lichts", a strict religious sect to which his grandfather had once belonged. Modern literary criticism of these early works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage them as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland, far from the realities of the industrialised nineteenth century, seen as characteristic of what became known as the Kailyard School.
Despite, or because of, they were popular enough at the time to establish Barrie as a successful writer. Following that success, he published Better Dead and at his own expense, but it failed to sell, his two "Tommy" novels, Sentimental Tommy and Tommy and Grizel, were about a boy and young man who clings to childish fantasy, with an unhappy ending. The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read the former in November 1896 and wrote that he "thoroughly dislike". Meanwhile, Barrie's attention turned to works for the theatre, beginning with a biography of Richard Savage, written by Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson, he followed this with Ibsen's Ghost
Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill
The Lord Ivor Charles Spencer-Churchill was the younger son of the 9th Duke of Marlborough and his first wife, the former Consuelo Vanderbilt, an American railroad heiress. His elder brother, was the 10th Duke of Marlborough. Lord Ivor Charles Spencer-Churchill was born on 14 October 1898, he was the second son of the 9th Duke of Consuelo Vanderbilt. In 1921, his parents divorced, his father wed the former Gladys Deacon. His mother was the only daughter and eldest child of William Kissam Vanderbilt, a New York railroad millionaire, his first wife, the Mobile, Alabama born Alva Erskine Smith, who married Oliver Belmont, his mother's name was in honour of her godmother, Consuelo Yznaga, a half-Cuban, half-American socialite who created a social stir a year earlier when she married the fortune-hunting George, Viscount Mandeville. Spencer-Churchill was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps in 1917. He was decorated with the French Legion of Honour. A conveyance dated 26 September 1930 documents the purchase of three parcels of land and premises known as Springhead situated along Mill Street at Fontmell Magna in the county of Dorset.
Another conveyance dated 8 November 1934 documents Lord Ivor Churchill selling one of these parcels to Henry Rolf Gardener In 1923, he was rumored to have become engaged to Grace Vanderbilt, a distant cousin and the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt III. On 15 November 1947, he married Elizabeth "Betty" Cunningham, the daughter of James Cyril Cunningham. Together, they had a son: Robert William Charles Spencer-Churchill, who in 1979 married Jeanne M. Maze, daughter of Etienne Maze and granddaughter of Paul Maze, a painter and friend of Winston Churchill, he developed an inoperable brain tumour and died in September 1956. He is buried beside his cousin, Sir Winston Churchill, close to his mother at St Martin's Church, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, he was a famous art collector interested by modern French painting, collecting paintings and organizing exhibitions like the Anglo-French Art & Travel Society's Exhibition of 19th Century French Painting. He was in close relations with the English art dealer, Percy Moore Turner
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York "aristocracy" to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24, 1862 to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City. To her friends and family she was known as "Pussy Jones." She had two older brothers, Frederic Rhinelander, sixteen, Henry Edward, twelve. She was baptized Easter Sunday, at Grace Church. Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a wealthy and prominent family having made their money in real estate; the saying "keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family. She was related to the Rensselaers, the most prestigious of the old patroon families, who had received land grants from the former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey.
Her father's first cousin was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. She had a lifelong friendship with her niece, the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand of Reef Point in Bar Harbor, Maine. Fort Stevens in New York was named for Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Stevens, a Revolutionary War hero and General. Wharton was born during the Civil War. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France, Italy and Spain. During her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French and Italian. At the age of nine, she suffered from typhoid fever, which nearly killed her, while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest. After the family returned to the United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York and their summers in Newport, Rhode Island. While in Europe, she was educated by governesses, she rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time, which were intended to allow women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties. She considered these fashions oppressive.
Edith wanted more education than she received, so she read from her father's library and from the libraries of her father's friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, Edith obeyed this command. Wharton early age; when her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five she started what she called "making up." She invented stories for her family and would walk with an open book, turn the pages as if reading and improvise a story. Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, attempted to write her first novel at age eleven, her mother's criticism quashed her ambition and she turned to poetry. At age 15, her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" by Heinrich Karl Brugsch, for which she was paid $50, her family did not want her name to appear in print, since writing was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman of her time. The poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson who supported women's education.
In 1877, at the age of 15, she secretly wrote a 30,000 word novella "Fast and Loose." In 1878 her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, Verses, to be published. Wharton published a poem under a pseudonym in the New York World in 1879. In 1880 she had five poems published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly, an important literary magazine. Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in Scribner's Magazine in October 1889. Between 1880 and 1890 Wharton put her writing aside to perform as socialite. Wharton keenly observed the social changes happening around her which would appear in her writing. Wharton came out as a debutante to society in 1879. Wharton was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time at a December dance given by a wealthy socialite, Anna Morton. Wharton began a courtship with the son of a wealthy businessman.
Wharton's family did not approve of Stevens. In the middle of Wharton's debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for Wharton's father's health. Wharton's father, George Frederic Jones, died in Cannes in 1882 of a stroke. Stevens was with the Wharton family in Europe during this time. Wharton and her mother returned to the United States and Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens announcing their engagement in August 1882; the month the two were to marry, the engagement abruptly ended. Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, moved back to Paris in 1883 and lived there until her death in 1901. Wharton married in 1885 and began to build upon three interests--American houses and Italy. On April 29, 1885, at age 23, Wharton married Edward Robbins Wharton, 12 years her senior, at the Trinity Chapel Complex. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel; the Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport.
They bought and moved to Land's End on the other side of Newport in 1893 for $80,000. Wharton decorated Land's End with the help of designer Ogden Cod
New York City
The City of New York called either New York City or New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, exerts a significant impact upon commerce, research, education, tourism, art and sports; the city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of, a separate county of the State of New York. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898; the city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world. In 2017, the New York metropolitan area produced a gross metropolitan product of US$1.73 trillion. If greater New York City were a sovereign state, it would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. New York is home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world. New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan.
The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, it has been the country's largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U. S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U. S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability, as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. Many districts and landmarks in New York City are well known, with the city having three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013 and receiving a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world. Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads", is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
The names of many of the city's landmarks and parks are known around the world. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. New York is home to the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with 472 rail stations. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top universities in the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. In 1664, the city was named in honor of the Duke of York.
James's older brother, King Charles II, had appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, which England had seized from the Dutch. During the Wisconsinan glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth; the erosive forward movement of the ice contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown. He named it Nouvelle Angoulême. A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio.
The Padrón Rea
Crop (implement)
A crop, sometimes called a riding crop or hunting crop, is a short type of whip without a lash, used in horse riding, part of the family of tools known as horse whips. A modern crop consists of a long shaft of fiberglass or cane, covered in leather, fabric, or similar material; the rod of a crop thickens at one end to form a handle, terminates in a thin, flexible tress such as wound cord or a leather tongue, known as a keeper. The thin end is intended to make contact with the horse, whilst the keeper prevents the horse's skin from being marked; the handle may have a loop of leather to help secure the grip or a "mushroom" on the end to prevent it from slipping through the rider's hand. The length of a crop is designed to allow enough leverage for it to be accelerated with a controlled flick of the wrist,without causing the rider balancing problems. Thus, a true crop is short; the term "whip" is a more common term that includes both riding crops as well as longer types of horse whips used for both riding and ground work.
A whip is a little slower than a crop due to having greater length and flexibility. Crops are principally designed to back up the natural aids of a rider, but may be used as a reprimand by more experienced riders, for example to discipline a horse for refusing a jump or other types of disobedience. However, care must be taken not to desensitize the animal to the stimulus. Dressage whip is a true whip, longer than a crop, for horse training, allowing a rider to touch the mount's side while keeping both hands on the reins. Hunting whips are not for use on the horse, but have a "hook" at the end to use in opening and shutting gates without dismounting, as well as a long leather thong to keep the hounds from coming near the horse's legs, getting kicked. Weapon Crops can be carried as a weapon. In the Sherlock Holmes series of novels and short stories, Holmes is said to carry one as his favourite weapon, it is a loaded hunting crop. Such crops were sold at one time. Loading refers to the practice of filling the shaft and head with a heavy metal to provide some heft.
Fetishism Crops may sometimes be employed by sado-masochistic tops as an implement to "tame" their sexual partner. Art deco sculptor Bruno Zach produced his best known sculpture—called "The Riding Crop" —which features a scantily clad dominatrix wielding a crop. Quirt Whip
William Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester
William Drogo Montagu, 7th Duke of Manchester KP, known as Lord Kimbolton from 1823 to 1843 and as Viscount Mandeville from 1843 to 1855, was a British peer and Conservative Member of Parliament. William Montagu was born at Kimbolton Castle in 1823, he was the eldest son of 6th Duke of Manchester. His mother was Millicent Sparrow, daughter of Brig. Gen. Robert Bernard Sparrow of Brampton Park, Huntingdonshire, he was MP for Bewdley 1848–1852 and Huntingdonshire 1852–1855. He joined the Canterbury Association on 27 May 1848, it was Edward Gibbon Wakefield's unfulfilled hope that Lord Mandeville would emigrate to New Zealand and be the aristocratic leader in the colony. However Lord Mandeville and his grandmother, Lady Olivia Sparrow, did buy 500 acres of land between them in Riccarton. Mandeville North near Kaiapoi is named after Lord Mandeville, he succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his father in 1855, inheriting the family seat of Kimbolton Castle in Huntingdonshire. He had an illegitimate son with Sarah Maria Morris.
When Sarah was 8 months pregnant, the Montagu Family had her married off to Samuel Palmer on 4 March 1850. When the child was born on the 10 May 1850, he was named William Edward Palmer. William Edward Palmer married Emma Prentice on 24 December 1873 at Bedfordshire. William married Countess Luise Friederike Auguste von Alten on 22 July 1852, they had five children: George Victor Drogo Montagu, 8th Duke of Manchester he married Francisca de la Consolacion Yznaga on 22 May 1876. They had three children. Lady Mary Louisa Elizabeth Montagu she married William Douglas-Hamilton, 12th Duke of Hamilton on 10 December 1873, they had one daughter. She remarried Robert Forster on 20 July 1897. Lady Louisa Augusta Beatrice Montagu she married Archibald Acheson, 4th Earl of Gosford on 10 August 1876, they had five children. Lord Charles William Augustus Montagu he married Hon. Mildred Sturt on 4 December 1930. Lady Alice Maude Olivia Montagu she married Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby on 5 January 1889, they had three children.
In 1877, he was created a Knight of the Order of St Patrick. He died on 22 March 1890 in Italy at the Hotel Naples. 1823–1843: Lord Kimbolton 1843–1848: Viscount Mandeville 1848–1855: Viscount Mandeville MP 1855–1877: His Grace The Duke of Manchester 1877–1890: His Grace The Duke of Manchester KP Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Duke of Manchester
Vanderbilt family
The Vanderbilt family is an American family of Dutch origin who gained prominence during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthropy. Cornelius Vanderbilt's descendants went on to build grand mansions on Fifth Avenue in New York City, luxurious "summer cottages" in Newport, Rhode Island, the palatial Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, various other opulent homes; the Vanderbilts were once the wealthiest family in America. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest American until his death in 1877. After that, his son William acquired his father's fortune, was the richest American until his death in 1885; the Vanderbilts' prominence lasted until the mid-20th century, when the family's 10 great Fifth Avenue mansions were torn down, most other Vanderbilt houses were sold or turned into museums in what has been referred to as the "Fall of the House of Vanderbilt".
Branches of the family are found on the United States East Coast. Contemporary descendants include fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt, her youngest son, journalist Anderson Cooper, actor Timothy Olyphant, musician John P. Hammond and screenwriter James Vanderbilt; the progenitor of the Vanderbilt family was Jan Aertszoon or Aertson, a Dutch farmer from the village of De Bilt in Utrecht, who emigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland as an indentured servant to the Van Kouwenhoven family in 1650. Jan's village name was added to the Dutch "Van" to create "Van der Bilt", which evolved into Vanderbilt when the English took control of New Amsterdam; the family is associated with the Dutch patrician Van der Bilt. His great-great-great-grandson Cornelius Vanderbilt began the prominence of the family, the fourth of nine children born to a Staten Island family of modest means. Through his paternal great-great grandmother Abigail Southard, he descends from Republic of Salé President Jan Janszoon and his son Anthony Janszoon van Salee.
They were among the earliest arrivals to 17th century New Amsterdam. In a number of documents dating back to this period, Anthony is described as tawny or mulatto, as his mother was of Berber origin from Cartagena in the Kingdom of Murcia. Cornelius Vanderbilt left school at age 11 and went on to build a shipping and railroad empire that, during the 19th century, would make him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Starting with a single boat, he grew his fleet until he was competing with Robert Fulton for dominance of the New York waterways, his energy and eagerness earning him the nickname "Commodore" the highest rank in the United States Navy. Fulton's company had established a monopoly on trade out of New York Harbor. Vanderbilt, based in New Jersey at the time, flouted the law, steaming in and out of the harbor under a flag that read, "New Jersey Must Be Free!" He hired the attorney Daniel Webster to argue his case before the United States Supreme Court. The Vanderbilt family lived on Staten Island until the mid-1800s, when the Commodore built a house on Washington Place.
Although he always occupied a modest home, members of his family would use their wealth to build magnificent mansions. Shortly before his death in 1877, Vanderbilt donated US$1 million for the establishment of Vanderbilt University in Nashville; the Commodore left the majority of his enormous fortune to William Henry Vanderbilt. William Henry, who outlived his father by just eight years, increased the profitability of his father's holdings, increased the reach of the New York Central Railroad, doubled the Vanderbilt wealth, he built the first of what would become many grand Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue, at 640 Fifth Avenue. William Henry appointed his first son, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, as the next "Head of House". Cornelius II built the largest private home in New York, at 1 West 58th Street, containing 154 rooms, designed by George B. Post, he built The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island. Cornelius II's brother, William Kissam Vanderbilt featured prominently in the family's affairs, he built a magnificent home on Fifth Avenue and would become one of the great architectural patrons of the Gilded Age, hiring the architects for Grand Central Terminal.
He built Marble House at 596 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. George Washington Vanderbilt II, William Henry Vanderbilt's youngest son, built Biltmore, in Asheville, North Carolina. While some of Cornelius Vanderbilt's descendants gained fame in business, others achieved prominence in other ways, e.g.: Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, was a passenger on the RMS Lusitania and died when it sank. Alfred's eldest son, from his first marriage, William Henry Vanderbilt III was Governor of Rhode Island. Alfred's second son Alfred Jr. became racing elder. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt gained fame as a sportsman, he invented the contract form of bridge and won the most coveted prize in yacht racing, the America's Cup, on three occasions. Harold's brother William Kissam "Willie K" Vanderbilt II launched the Vanderbilt Cup for auto racing. Gloria Vanderbilt is a noted artist and author. Gloria's son, Anderson Cooper, is a Peabody Award-winning journalist and television producer and personality. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was a sculptor, art patron and collector, founder of the Whitney Museum of American ArtIn 1855, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt donated 45 acres of property to the Moravian Church and Cemetery at New Dorp on Staten Island, New York.
His son Wil
