每日一篇Day49TracyBorman笔下的历史人物HenriettaHoward--四柱八字,命理,八字命理,六爻占卜,命理百科-寅午文化

上期长难句

词汇

On Tuesday afternoon, as news about the Virginia Tech murders filtered out, the staff of a hamburger restaurant in downtown Austin gathered in front of a television suspended over the bar.

星期二下午，关于弗吉尼亚科技学院杀人案的消息传开后，奥斯汀市区一家汉堡包餐厅的员工聚集在吧台上方的电视机前。

Tracy Borman can tell a good story. Admittedly, her subject is a gift. But Henrietta Howard, mistress to George II, lived in the midst of a large cast of characters, many of them entangled in the complicated politics of 18th-century court life, and Ms Borman handles them and their world with aplomb.

Though the 18th century is called the Age of Reason, it was anything but. Henrietta was born in 1689, a year after the balance of power in Britain shifted from monarch to Parliament. But this did nothing to shift the tyranny of men over women, and Henrietta's life was largely shaped by violent and unreasonable men.When she was eight, her father, the profligate and choleric squire of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, challenged a neighbour to a duel for impugning his valour. He was killed for his pains, leaving a wife, eight children and a pile of debts. Eight years later, perhaps hoping to help her now motherless siblings, Henrietta released her dowry money by marrying a cousin, Charles Howard, 14 years her senior.

It was a disaster. Charles turned out to be a compulsive gambler and wife-beater, and their lives descended into lodging-house flits and near-starvation. Then, aged 25, Henrietta made her own astonishing gamble. In 1714, when Queen Anne lay dying, she took herself and Charles off to Hanover, where George Louis, heir presumptive to the English throne, held court. There she joined throngs of other hopefuls, all jockeying for the notice either of George Louis, or his son, George Augustus, or his daughter-in-law, Caroline.

Henrietta's gamble paid off, though frying pans and fires come to mind. Her appointment as Woman of the Bedchamber to Princess Caroline meant long days of tedious and exacting ceremony, such as holding her mistress's wash basin on bended knee, a point that Caroline spitefully insisted on when Henrietta became her husband's mistress. Not that that was much comfort either. The man was a boor, and dull with it. In any case, Henrietta never really supplanted Caroline. Being a royal mistress was, in this case, more a post than a romance. But it suited Henrietta in that it protected her from her husband—something the law denied her.

Henrietta was known for her discreet and even temper, but she must also have had sharp elbows. As Ms Borman vividly shows, the court was a scandal-mongering, fickle place, riven by political factionalism and held at fever pitch by the royal family's own very public quarrels. This was the atmosphere Henrietta breathed. And yet she somehow managed to be liked. Even acid-tongued poet, Alexander Pope, described her as reasonable, good-humoured, witty and, above all, a friend.

Some of Ms Borman's most engaging writing describes Henrietta's circle of friends—poets, writers and wits such as Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole—and the pleasure they all took in the design of her Palladian villa, Marble Hill at Twickenham. When her husband's death made it safe for her to retire, this was where she came: to entertain, to re-marry, to have a home. After a life of winging it, such hard-wrung domesticity feels almost heroic.

词汇

aplomb n. 冷静，沉着

profligate n. 享乐者

choleric adj. 易怒的

impugne v. 责难，驳斥

valour n. 英勇，勇猛

dowry n. 嫁妆

heir presumptive n. 假定继承人

jockey v. 用手段图谋某个职位或利益：

exacting adj. 严格的

spitefully adv. 怀恨地，恶意地

boor n. 粗野的人

supplant v. 取代

monger v. 传播

fickle adj. 薄情的

factionalism n. 派性，党派之争

长难句

But Henrietta Howard, mistress to George II, lived in the midst of a large cast of characters, many of them entangled in the complicated politics of 18th-century court life, and Ms Borman handles them and their world with aplomb.

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