Christmas Every Day

1643 Death of an Anglican Scholar

Dr John Boyse (also spelled Bois or Boys) was born in 1560 and was given an intensive education as a child — by the age of 5 he could read the Hebrew Bible. He intended to become a physician but found that studying medicine brought on bouts of hypochondria so he switched to a career in the Church of England. 

Boyse’s scholarship in Greek was so highly regarded that he was named as one of the translators whose job it was to produce a new English Bible, the one that became the Authorized (or King James) Version. He was responsible for the books of the Apocrypha as well as assisting in other Old Testament passages. Boyse was also acclaimed for his translations of the writings of St John Chrysostom.

A 19th-century biographer said of him:

Boyse lived to eighty-two, though generally engaged eight hours a day in study. He seems to have been wise before his time as to the management of his physical system under intellectual labour, and his practice may even yet be described with advantage. He made but two meals, dinner and supper; betwixt which he never so much as drank, unless, upon trouble of flatulency, some small quantity of aqua-vitae and sugar. After meat he was careful, almost to curiosity, in picking and rubbing his teeth; esteeming that a special preservative of health; by which means he carried to his grave almost a Hebrew alphabet of teeth [twenty-two]. When that was done, he used to sit or walk an hour or more, to digest his meat, before he would go to his study. . . . He would never study at all, in later years, between supper and bed; which time, two hours at least, he would spend with his friends in discourse, hearing and telling harmless, delightful stories, whereof he was exceedingly full. . . . The posture of his body in studying was always standing, except when for ease he went upon his knees. No modern physiologist could give a better set of rules than these for a studious life, excepting as far as absence of all reference to active exercise is concerned.

In fact, Boyse was fond of walking, and was noted for never standing by a window, or going to bed with cold feet.

1815 Birth of the founder of Canada

John Alexander Macdonald was born in Scotland but emigrated to Upper Canada with his family in 1820. They settled in Kingston where Macdonald trained for a career in the law. In 1838 he was in Toronto where he famously defended an accused rebel from the 1837 uprising. His law practice and business thrived; he acquired large real estate holdings and was named the first president of Manufacturers Life Insurance.

Macdonald entered politics first as an alderman in Kingston and then as a representative in the Legislative Assembly, serving in a Conservative administration as receiver general. Canadian political life was in a state of flux; reformers were making demands for responsible government; there were calls to split the united Province of Canada. Macdonald walked a careful line in an alliance with Québec politicians, serving as joint premier from 1857-62.

In the 1860s there was widespread interest in the colonies of British North America for some sort of union and increased independence from Great Britain. Macdonald took part in conferences to help bring those aims to fruition. In 1867 a new nation emerged – a confederation of Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to form the Dominion of Canada. Macdonald assumed the office of Prime Minister.

The Canada of 1867 was an enclave in the eastern part of the continent; Macdonald had a vision of a nation that would embrace other British colonies, resist American encroachment, and stretch to the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans. Canada soon acquired the vast territories of the Hudson Bay Company (which became the Northwest Territories), admitted the provinces of Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, and began railway projects to bind the country together.

A financial scandal brought down the Macdonald government in 1874 but Sir John (as he now was) returned to power four years later and remained Prime Minister until his death in 1891. These last terms brought about the completion of the transcontinental railway, the defeat of the Northwest Rebellion, and the implementation of a high-tariff National Policy to protect Canadian industry from American competition.

Macdonald was undeniably the greatest Canadian; the equivalent of George Washington,  Alfred the Great, or Giuseppe Mazzini. He has fallen into disfavour in the eyes of today’s hypersensitive pearl-clutchers for his discouragement of Chinese immigration, the execution of Louis Riel, and his part in the establishment of Indian Residential schools. It is the fashion of the day for bien-pensants to regard this country as a racist hell-hole and, thus, Macdonald is now the equivalent of Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, or J.K. Rowling. Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

1995 Death of Peter Cook

Peter Cook (1937-95) was the most important comedic figure in the English-speaking world in the last half of the 20th century. He may rightly be considered the godfather of satire and the inspiration for innumerable writers, comedians, and producers.

He began his career in the famous Footlights of Cambridge University, an institution that nurtured such talents as Eric Idle, Hugh Laurie, and Douglas Adams. Cook joined with Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller in 1960 to form the revue “Beyond the Fringe” which was a success in London and Broadway. His financial support of the satirical magazine Private Eye allowed that publication to continue through difficult years. Cook’s partnership with Dudley Moore produced classic sketches and a genial collaboration in movies The Wrong Box and Bedazzled but their relationship foundered in later years.

Cook, like many comedic geniuses, was not a happy man and suffered from alcoholism before dying of a gastro-intestinal haemorrhage. 

Here is Cook in one of his most famous moments.

1908 Birth of Fearless Nadia

Few performers have had the cross-cultural impact of Fearless Nadia, born Mary Ann Evans in Perth Australia. She was the daughter of a British soldier who moved with her parents to India at an early age. When her father died in World War I the family moved to Peshawar on the Northwest Frontier where she learned to ride and shoot. These skills came in handy when she took up a career in the circus (her mother had been a belly dancer and may have inspired her show-business ambitions). On the advice of a fortune teller she changed her name to Nadia.

In the 1930s she attracted the attention of movie mogul JBH Wadia who thought that her height, blonde hair, and blue eyes would prove an attraction in action films. She made over 40 cinematic appearances with her bigggest hit as masked adventuress “Hunterwali”. Doing her own stunts, she sang and danced her way into the hearts of the Indian move-going public who were dazzled by her racy athletic performances. One critic noted: “A hero in a male-dominated universe, she was a star, a stuntwoman, a horse-rider, roof-climber and gravity-defier, all rolled into one. She brandished a whip at the drop of a hat. Wearing a mask, she sent men flying with a thwack. She ran atop trains and made lions her pet.”

At the age of 53 she married Homi, the brother of JBH Wadia, and thus became Nadia Wadia. The couple had long postponed their nuptials due to the opposition of his traditionally-minded mother.

Fearless Nadia died in 1996 but her career is now undergoing a posthumous reassessment and she is hailed as a proto-feminist and pioneer. Her film 1940 Diamond Queen” is said to have “mixed stunts, slapstick and important issues such as fighting corruption, advocating education and literacy and exhorting Indian women to rise up against chauvinism and patriarchy.”

1905 Birth of Sterling Holloway

If a woman’s face is her fortune, sometime’s a man with an unfortunate face can make his fortune by using his voice. Such was the case with actor Sterling Holloway who appeared in over 140 movies and television shows despite startling features and a shock of unruly red hair.

Holloway started on the stage in his teens and by his early 20s he was on Broadway where his very pleasant tenor debuted such Rodgers and Hart classics as “I’ll Take Manhattan” and “Mountain Scenery”. He moved to Hollywood in the last days of the silent era with roles in The Batttling Kangaroo and Casey at the Bat. After the introduction of “talkies”, his face and his distinctive reedy voice provided him a steady living in comedies

Holloway’s most memorable part was that of the rustic bumpkin Willie in the Christmas movie Remember the Night with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. He sings a lovely version of “A Perfect Day” accompanied by Stanwyck on the piano.

Enduring fame came to Holloway when he began to provide voice-over for Walt Disney animated films. He had roles in Dumbo, Bambi, The Jungle Book, Mickey and the Beanstalk, Alice in Wonderland, Lamber the Sheepish Lion, The Aristocats, and most notably as Winnie the Pooh. (On a personal note, I hated the latter performance. Pooh must have an English accent.)

In his private life Holloway had an extensive collection of modern art. He was survived by an adopted son, Richard.

The recent Canadian hysteria over renaming public buildings or schools and tearing down statues of national heroes who no longer meet current tastes in political correctness appears to be shared by other nations.

On the African continent one looks in vain for Salisbury (now Harare) or Fort Victoria (now Masvingo). India too has for some time been renaming cities in accordance with local usages — thus Bombay becomes Mumbai, Madras becomes Chennai and Calcutta becomes Kolkata. A recent change in an island name may be more controversial. The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Modi has decided that Ross Island, named after a colonial-era marine surveyor will now be known as Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep.

Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist and one-time leader of the Congress Party, fighting for independence from Britain. Like Gandhi, he opposed Indian aid to the Allies in the Second World War but Bose took his resistance to a higher plane. In 1941 he escaped from India through Afghanistan to the Soviet Union (then an ally of Adolf Hitler) which sent him on to Nazi Germany. There he attempted to raise a volunteer force of Indian prisoners of war — the Indian Legion — to aid the German war effort in the hope that this would drive the British from India. The Nazis were lukewarm to his pretensions and to the military might of his Legion but realized he might do some real damage if he were sent back to Asia.  In February 1943 he was dispatched in a German submarine to the Indian Ocean off Madagascar where he rendezvoused with a Japanese submarine. He had ceased to be a Nazi puppet and was now an agent of Imperial Japan.

In Japan he took over the Indian exile movement and quickly raised a large force — the Indian National Army– from prisoners of war captured in Malaya. He proclaimed himself the head of the true Indian government with its own banks, postal system and administration. The INA took part in battles against the British in the Japanese drive to invade India but this was a disastrous campaign which resulted in a rout of the invaders. At the end of the war Bose died in a plane crash on Taiwan. He remains a beloved figure among Indian nationalists, despite (or, perhaps, because of) his admiration for fascism and violence.

A collection of knee-slapping cartoons on the subject of resolutions.

1916 The murder of Rasputin

Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was a Siberian mystic whose seemingly supernatural powers won him the friendship of the Russian ruling family and a place of influence at a time of crisis in the empire. On this day in 1916 he was murdered by an aristocratic cabal.

Born into a peasant family in 1869, Rasputin underwent some sort of religious experience in his late 20s; he began making pilgrimages to to monasteries and holy men and soon acquired his own reputation for holy powers. Influential churchmen introduced him to high society in the capital St Petersburg and by 1905 he had met Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

The tsar’s son Alexei, heir to the Romanov dynasty, was a victim of hemophilia. Rasputin was asked to pray for the boy but it was his personal visits to the child that seemed to stem the disease. The tsarina Alexandra called Rasputin “our friend”, bringing him into intimate contact with the royal family. Lurid rumours spread about his relationship with the empress and her daughters, especially after news of Rasputin’s sexual behaviour with his many female followers gained public credence.

As Russia’s fortunes in World War One grew grim, Rasputin was blamed as a malign influence and a threat to national security. He had already been the subject in 1914 of an unsuccessful assassination attempt when he was lured to the palace of Prince Felix Yusopov in late 1916. There a gang of high-ranking nobles and politicians poisoned him and shot him, leaving Rasputin for dead. But when Yusopov went back to check on the body the prince recalled:

Rasputin lay exactly where we had left him. I felt his pulse: not a beat, he was dead.

Scarcely knowing what I was doing I seized the corpse by the arms and shook it violently. It leaned to one side and fell back. I was just about to go, when suddenly noticed an almost imperceptible quivering of his left eyelid. I bent over and watched him closely; slight tremors contracted his face.

All of a sudden, I saw the left eye open … A few seconds later his right eyelid began to quiver, then opened. then saw both eyes–the green eyes of a viper-staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred. The blood ran cold in my veins. My muscles turned to stone. wanted to run away, to call for help, but my legs refused to obey me and not a sound came from my throat.

 Then a terrible thing happened: with a sudden vio lent effort Rasputin leapt to his feet, foaming at the mouth. A wild roar echoed through the vaulted rooms, and his hands convulsively thrashed the air. He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were burst ing from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips. And all the time he called me by name, in a low raucous voice.

 No words can express the horror I felt. I tried to free myself but was powerless in his vice-like grip. A ferocious struggle began … This devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die.

 I realized now who Rasputin really was. It was the reincarnation of Satan himself who held me in his clutches and would never let me go till my dying day. By a superhuman effort I succeeded in freeing myself from his grasp.

Rasputin struggled to his feet, made it out of the house and into the courtyard where he was shot yet again. His body was then thrown into the river from which it was recovered the next day.

His assassins claimed they were working for the good of Russia. In order to minimize scandal the killers were exiled or sent to the front lines of the war. Two months later the Russian Empire was overthrown in the February Revolution.

1862

The largest mass execution in American history

In the summer of 1862, a number of Sioux tribes in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory rose up in a violent protest against their mistreatment by American government agents. Encroaching settlements had reduced their ability to hunt for food and promised supplies did not arrive, leaving the natives starving. On August 17, a hunting party of Sioux massacred 5 settlers, an act which encouraged a Dakota war council under Little Crow to sanction an all-out war which they hoped would drive the white man from their territory. Indian agencies were attacked, farm families were killed, detachments of troops were defeated and a number of towns were burnt to the ground. Trade on the Red River between Winnipeg and St Paul was halted and travel on the roads became too dangerous.

Because the United States was deeply involved in the Civil War, Washington was slow to send reinforcements to the area but when they arrived their numbers and firepower proved overwhelming. Bit by bit the tribes’ war-making capacity was reduced and though fighting would continue farther west, the majority of Sioux had surrendered by late September. Hundreds of their men were subjected to a far-too-speedy and ruthless trial; 303 were convicted of murder and rape and sentenced to death.

Henry Whipple, the Episcopal bishop in Minnesota, travelled to Washington to appeal for clemency but feeling among whites in the state was all for the execution of the Sioux. Politicians and generals warned that if mercy were granted, private vengeance might be the result. Abraham Lincoln personally helped whittle down the list to 38 who seemed most guilty. These men were executed at Mankato on a single gallows platform on December 26, 1862.