"Downing Street" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... — * At Downing Street Mr. Harcourt informed the Deputation that he had the "assurance of General Botha" that the Natives have too much ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... wide British Dominion there rises one complaint against the ineffectuality of what are nicknamed our "red-tape" establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial Office, Foreign Office and the others, in Downing Street and the neighborhood. To me individually these branches of human business are little known; but every British citizen and reflective passer-by has occasion to wonder much, and inquire earnestly, concerning them. To all men it is evident that ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... and considered himself a thoroughly useful member of society in that he condescended to write letters for Lord Persiflage. He was pleasant in his manners to all men, and had accommodated himself to Roden as well as though Roden's office had also been in Downing Street ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Duchess of Devonshire took fright, and did not venture to stay at Devonshire House for many nights after dusk, but took refuge at Lord Clermont's in Berkeley Square, sleeping on a sofa in the drawing-room. In Downing Street, Lord North was dining with a party his brother, Colonel North, Mr. Eden, afterward Lord Auckland, the Honourable John St. John, General Fraser, and Count Malzen, the Prussian minister. The little square then surrounding ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... other governors, Lord Dalhousie attempted to govern to the best of his ability, and what mistakes he committed arose from the contradictory and perplexing instructions he received from the officials in Downing Street, who were quite incapable at times of understanding the real condition of affairs in ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou go to Schoenbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon: thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised almighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... by mismanagement and misapprehension in Downing Street had already given trouble during the very short time when Mr. Gladstone was under-secretary at the colonial office; but they now broke into the flame of open revolt. The perversity of a foolish king and weakness and disunion among his whig ministers had brought ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... about the human race with the New York Sun, Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... men who had walked up together arm in arm from Downing Street, stood for several moments in Pall Mall before separating. The pressman who was passing yearned for the sunlight in his camera. One of the greatest financiers of the city in close confabulation with Mr. Gordon Jones, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the violet dusk set in. The beautiful young Premiere stood at the window of her yellow-and-black boudoir, gazing a little wistfully at the almost deserted pavements of Downing Street. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... regret to me that the Government of the day would not accept any share of the pecuniary responsibility of adding to the compactness of the Empire, by connecting the two oceans by telegraph and by road. The despatch which I copy—dated Downing Street, 5 March, 1863—distinctly says, in its third paragraph, "Her Majesty's Government are of opinion that they cannot apply to Parliament to sanction any share in the proposed subsidy ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... but the power of controlling expenditures. The fortune of Sir George, on the failure of issue in the third generation, went to the foundation of Downing College, in Cambridge, England. It amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. It is not improbable, that Downing Street, in London, owes its ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of war-winning— Downing mandarins in Downing Street, Fixing brands of CAIN upon the sinning, Bingeing up the Army and the Fleet; Weary of dislodging Kings and Kaisers, Wearier of his friends than of his foes, Prompted by his medical advisers He has wandered South to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... in that fat Lord North which was the most provoking thing that the Opposition had ever to encounter from him. He heard me with half-shut eyes. When I had finished a long violent speech—which I made striding about his room in Downing Street, and gesticulating with all the energy of an Irishman—he opened one eye, smiled, and asked me gently if I had done. On my replying in the affirmative, he said, 'Well, Mr. Barry, I'll answer you, point by point. The King is exceedingly averse to make peers, as you know. Your ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have at all a perfect idea of him; nor did I ever hear the curious anecdote you tell me of the banker and my father. I was much better acquainted with Archbishop Blackburne. He lived within two doors of my father in Downing Street, and took much notice of me when I was near man.... He was a little hurt at not being raised to Canterbury on Wake's death [1737], and said to my father, "You did not think on me; but it is true, I am too old, I am too old." Perhaps, Sir, these are gossiping stories, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... streets. A second illumination followed, which was even superior to the first in magnificence. Pitt with difficulty escaped from the tumultuous kindness of an innumerable multitude which insisted on drawing his coach from Saint Paul's Churchyard to Downing Street. This was the moment at which his fame and fortune may be said to have reached the zenith. His influence in the closet was as great as that of Carr or Villiers had been. His dominion over the Parliament ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... outbursts of royal petulance and old-time kingcraft, and similar ebullitions from Downing Street, exhorting the Upper Canadian Administration to hold tight the reins of government, the reforming spirit of the period had a hard time of it in entering on its many years conflict with an arrogant and bureaucratic Executive. Of many of the members of the ruling faction ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... put them up; they did not fly so high. All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old Berlin to help her. If all that is worth while in London were built in the spirit of Downing Street and Whitehall and the statue of Nurse Cavell, it might be said that ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... between Peterhouse and the river, the vigorous growth of the scientific side of the University is shown in the vast buildings newly erected on both sides of Downing Street, which has now become a street of laboratories and museums. Now that the outworks of the hoary citadel of Classicism have been stormed, and the undermining of the great walls has already begun, the development of modern science at Cambridge will be accelerated, ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... coincidence. Everyone knows how Bob Sawyer's party was disturbed by Mrs. Raddle's angry expostulations, and the guests had to disperse. Well, Mr. Boswell, who had much of the Sawyer tone—gave a party at his rooms in Downing Street, and his landlord behaved so outrageously, that he gave him notice, and the next day quitted his rooms. "I feel I shall have to give my landlady notice," said Mr. Sawyer with a ghastly smile. Mr. Boswell had actually ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... Some of your sentences I remember even now. I tell you, Julien, they helped me to appreciate you. I liked you better when you took up the pen sometimes than I liked you in those perfect clothes and perfect manner in your office at Downing Street. Your tongue had the politician's trick of gliding over the surface of things. Your pen scratched and spluttered its way into the heart of affairs. Get back to it, Julien. I want your first article ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... peasant. A carriage with foaming horses drove in upon the pier as the tug pulled the steamer out upon the Hudson. Its single occupant was an English government agent bearing a special message from the British embassador at Washington to Downing Street, London. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... electioneering made it doubtful whether the Government candidate or the one whose politics were more in accordance with her own would be returned to Parliament, she, then a very old lady, drove in her travelling-carriage with four horses to Downing Street, and demanding to see the Prime Minister, with whom she was well acquainted, accosted him thus: "Well, my lord, are you quite determined to make your man stand for our seat?" "Yes, Mrs. Beaumont, I think quite determined." "Very ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... THE REALM."—We agree with you in regretting that Lord FISHER was unable to accept Lord BERESFORD'S invitation to come and hear him speak in your House about the Downing Street sandwichmen and other collateral subjects arising out of the Air Service debate. You will be glad however to know that Lord FISHER'S absence was not due to indisposition, but to a previous engagement to take tea on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... long solitary walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast, what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so cultivated! Music was a special inherited gift of the entire family, and no trouble ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... published that Sanders had particularly warned Mr. Blowter against visiting the interior, that Sir Robert, that amiable man, had also expressed a warning, and that the august Government itself had sent a long and expensive telegram from Downing Street suggesting that a trip to the Ochori country was inadvisable in the present state ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... resolved to rouse public opinion by breaking tradesmen's windows, it overlooked that the English are a nation of shopkeepers, and that the public opinion thus roused would be for the first time almost unreservedly on the side of the Government. And when the Cabinet of Downing Street, moved to responsive recklessness, raided the quarters of the Women's Social and Political Union and indicted the leaders for criminal conspiracy, it equally overlooked an essential factor of the situation. The Cabinet of the conspiracy was at least as much a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... afterwards may be said to have worked and thought together in an intellectual partnership.[18] Webb and Olivier were colleagues in the Colonial Office, and it is said that for some time the Fabian records—they were not very bulky—were stored on a table in Downing Street. For many years there were probably few evenings of the week and few holidays which two or more of them did ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... traveller-classes when all the hotels of London have been taken over by the Government is now occupying both the waking and sleeping hours (such as they are) of the War Cabinet, and a special department of the Intelligence Department has been created to deal with it on the roof of No. 10 Downing Street. It has not yet been decided whether all visitors to London should be sent back as soon as they arrive, or whether Sir JOSEPH LYONS should reap the sole benefit of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... and tore the note into pieces. Then he rang for his servant. "A bath and some clean clothes quickly," he ordered. "While I am changing, ring up Downing Street and see if Sir James is there. If not, find out exactly where he is. I must see him within half an hour. Afterwards, get ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on these occasions of entertaining my humble opinion that all this is complete "bosh;" and of asserting to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street, or Westminster Hall. Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of the Benevolent Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... in Ireland. The Irish Parliament expresses its approbation of the terms, and passes a vote of thanks to the negotiator. We at Westminster censure the terms and impeach the negotiator. Or are we to have two foreign offices, one in Downing Street and one in Dublin Castle? Is His Majesty to send to every court in Christendom two diplomatic agents, to thwart each other, and to be spies upon each other? It is inconceivable but that, in a very few years, disputes such as can be terminated only by arms must arise between communities so absurdly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... afternoon delivering messages, then dined and rode up by the young moon. I had plenty news when I got back; there is great talk in town of my deportation: it is thought they have written home to Downing Street requesting my removal, which leaves me not much alarmed; what I do rather expect is that H. J. Moors and I may be haled up before the C. J. to stand a trial for LESE-Majesty. Well, we'll try ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and public discourse. Unfortunately the rash act of the new Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head, in publishing the instructions of the Colonial Office, showed that the policy of Downing Street was the futile one of conciliation without concession. The Assembly once more refused to grant supplies without redress of grievances. The Commissioners made their report opposing any substantial change. In March, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... on Downing Street one house at least which looked as though it had been there forever and ever, but just here it was most commonplace and present-century in setting, and the roar of traffic was in my ears. But I am sure that I saw Richmond Hill House ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... compact with the Irish leader, and their Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, Thomas Drummond, had gained the affections of the people by his sympathetic statesmanship. An epigrammatic speaker said in the House of Commons that Peel governed England, O'Connell governed Ireland, and the Whigs governed Downing Street. It was all coming to an end. Drummond died, the Whigs went out of office, Peel governed Ireland, and England too. Froude just saw the last phase of O'Connellism, and he did not like it. In politics he never looked ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... instances, for Lord Nelson was, in different circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself can vouch, though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, an hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the Colonial Office in Downing Street, and there I was shown into the little waiting-room on the right hand, where I found, also waiting to see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom, from his likeness to his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognized ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... rang one another up on the telephone with futile questions, and invented new ways of preventing something from being down somewhere. The war to them was a far-off thing essential to their way of life, as miners in the coal-fields are essential to statesmen in Downing Street, especially in cold weather. But it did not touch their souls or their bodies. They did not see its agony, or imagine it, or worry about it. They were always cheerful, breezy, bright with optimism. They made a little work go a long way. They were haughty and arrogant ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... raised by the faithful Coalitionists as the victor is seen making his way to the Table, and then the speech, so unvarying in its construction that I fancy there must be a sealed pattern for it in the archives of No. 10, Downing Street. First comes a recital of the immense difficulties of the problems to be solved—in this case including a really serious difference of opinion with our good friends the French; then a little comic relief at the expense of his arch-critic in the Press, who on this occasion had surpassed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... and re-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. My days were now spent in communication with the offices of government, and a large portion of my nights in carrying on those correspondences, which, though seldom known in the routine of Downing Street, form the essential part of its intercourse with the continental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained. Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up to nearly the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... First, there is its inability to grasp the local conditions; and second, the underlying assumption that a moral judgment based upon the conditions of the home country, if valid, must be equally valid in South Africa. By the time that the home authority had become Downing Street instead of the peripatetic Chamber of Seventeen, the field of mischievous action over which these misconceptions operated had become enlarged. The natives were there, as before; but, in addition to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... might learn the lesson. It might be as well to keep near Downing Street a few small, fat Frenchmen, to be sent round the country when occasion called for it, shrugging their shoulders and eating frog sandwiches; or a file of untidy, lank-haired Germans might be retained, ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... of foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing Street. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... Tory purse, and manager of their party—had, with a courage undreamt of by his flock, put a veto upon this; and in a polite and public letter given the Coalition Liberals notice to quit. This independent action upset the influential Downing Street press, entertained the Free Liberals, and bewildered the docile Conservatives. The latter having no Prime Minister of their own, are not only deeply indebted to Mr. Lloyd George for all he has done for them, ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come out of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major's criticism. This Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that the control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April. No other lands under the sun were so blest, in the way of government, as were the colonies with which he had been acquainted; ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... at this time, we in James Street, Buckingham Gate, and the Nortons at Storey's Gate, at the opposite end of the Birdcage Walk. We both of us frequented the same place of worship—a tiny chapel wedged in among the buildings at the back of Downing Street, the entrance to which was from the park; it has been improved away by the new government offices. Our dinner at the McDonalds' was on a Saturday, and the next day, as we were walking part of the way home together from church, Mrs. Norton broke out about Theodore ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... himself into Mitchener's chair). Yes: it is indeed Balsquith. It has come to this: that the only way that the Prime Minister of England can get from Downing Street to the War Office is by assuming this disguise; shrieking "VOTES for Women"; and chaining himself to your doorscraper. They were at the corner in force. They cheered me. Bellachristina herself was there. She shook ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... Dashing round to Downing Street on our motor-scooter we were just in time to catch Sir PHILIP KERR by one of his coat-tails as he was disappearing into the door of No. 10 and to ask him whether the strange rumour as to the PRIME MINISTER'S latest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... turn his back on himself, but Mr. Gladstone spins round and round like a teetotum. I should think that such an instance has never been known since that good old parson who sung, 'Whatsoever king may reign, Still I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir.' Downing Street is the Grand Old Man's vicarage, and he endeavours to cling to it at all costs. In 1886 he said, 'I will not be a party to giving Ireland a legislative body to manage Irish concerns and at the same time have Irish members in London ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Huis ten-Bosch points to Wilhelmstrasse. Nothing can be done here. They suspect Downing Street.'—Ah, at The Hague, and at the ten-Bosch too, where the Czar and Andrew Carnegie held their first Peace Conference in 1899; ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... of fact," admitted the Prime Minister, "we are hampered by these votes-for-women creatures; they disturb our meetings throughout the country, and they try to turn Downing Street into a sort ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... possessed it, a man whose word is known to be unbreakable, whose hands are clean, whose record is stainless—the Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts. The man who is to rule South Africa must be a great soldier, not a tyrant, not a martinet, not a bundle of red tape tied up with a Downing Street bow and adorned with frills. The negro trouble is looming large on the African borders, and the negro chiefs know that in Lord Roberts they have their master. We must not pander to them to the injury of the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and America, and with their own internal problems to give much attention to Colonial education, and the year passed without further action. Finally, on the 30th of December, 1815, Lord Bathurst wrote from Downing Street to Sir Gordon Drummond, then administering the Government of Lower Canada, the following letter asking for information about the Jesuits' Estates, and intimating the intention of the Government to proceed with the establishment of a College or Colleges in ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... intercourse by steam with Britain, we can scarcely realize how far separated Canada was from England fifty years ago. Besides this, the channels through which that intercourse was carried on were few, and often of a partizan character. "Downing Street [Colonial Office] influence," and "Downing Street interference with Canadian rights," were popular and favourite topics of declamation and appeal with the leaders of a large section of the community. Not that there did not exist, in many instances, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Lord Saxingham went to his office in Downing Street as usual, and Lady Florence and Ernest found an opportunity to ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well as residents, are well acquainted also with Somerset House; and it is moreover tolerably well known that Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of Downing Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the telegrams and the questions which would have been addressed from Downing Street and the House of Commons to these Ministers on native matters, on the question of the administration of the Chinese Ordinance, on all the numerous intricate questions with which we are at the present moment involved in South Africa. And what would have been the position ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... into the hands of the same community of brigands. Diplomacy, while anxious to do its best for a lady in misfortune, showed signs of becoming restive at this expansion of its task; as a frivolous young gentleman in Downing Street remarked, "Any husband of Mrs. Dobrinton's we shall be glad to extricate, but let us know how many there are of them." For a woman who valued respectability ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... little time in which to enjoy his beautiful residences. True, he spent a few weeks on the Riviera in winter, shot once or twice over the Bracondale coverts in the season, and spent an annual fortnight up at the shooting lodge in Scotland; but he was usually to be found either at Downing Street or down at Bracondale immersed and absorbed ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of FATE, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance, or on the turning of a street, or on somebody else's turning of a street, or on somebody else's doing of something else in Downing Street or in Timbuctoo, now or a thousand years ago. Thus, for instance, if Miss Poots, in the year 1695, had never been the lovely inmate of a Spielhaus at Amsterdam, Mr. Van Silverkoop would never have seen her; if the day had ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lost a segment of his idolatrous following in Quebec because of clashes with the clergy and the sending of a contingent to the South African War, began to resist the cold machinations of the Chamberlain group. He began to see Empire, not as a commonwealth of democracies, but as domination from Downing Street. At home he was shrewd to observe that the Canada of his own domination was a complex of many "nationals," only a few of which were historically rooted in the Anglo-Saxon idea. He saw that the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... who sat in council in Downing Street was no dreaming pacifist. He who had tried to stop the irresistible flood of the Boer War now rode the full swell of the storm that threatened for the moment ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Anne's Gate every Wednesday afternoon till further notice, for tea and cigarettes. We were all busy, but we must all have tea somewhere, and why not in a place close to the Houses of Parliament, the Foreign Office, Downing Street, and the War Office? I went on to say that though I could not promise a Prime Minister once a week, I would undertake to get one of his colleagues or else some distinguished general or admiral whose conversation about the war would be worth hearing, to ornament my Conversazione. The proposal ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Wednesday, May 7th.—In Downing Street apparently Mesopotamia is not regarded as a "blessed word," for when Colonel WEDGWOOD asked whether that country, after its future status had been decided, would be taken out of the hands of the Foreign Office Mr. CECIL HARMSWORTH ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... Charlotte's thirteenth year. They are her Tales of the Islanders, which extend to four little volumes in brown paper covers neatly inscribed 'First Volume,' 'Second Volume,' and so on. The Duke is of absorbing importance in these 'Tales.' 'One evening the Duke of Wellington was writing in his room in Downing Street. He was reposing at his ease in a simple easy chair, smoking a homely tobacco-pipe, for he disdained all the modern frippery of cigars . . . ' and so on in an abundance of childish imaginings. The Search after Happiness and Characters ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... that circle in the year 1998, or 2024. "Listen to what Grandpapa's Diary says of the awful Zeppelin raids of February, 1917," or, "But Great-grandpapa, who had just finished his walk in the Park, and was passing Downing Street when the news came, etc." "Il est fatiguant," whispered Mr. St. John of General Webb at one of the dinners in "Henry Esmond," "avec sa trompette de Wynandael." That persistent blowing of the "trompette" of grandpapa would likewise be voted "fatiguant." "Grandpapa! A plague ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... said: "I have never suggested that the Army should not be sent to Ulster. I have never suggested that it should not do its duty when sent there. I hope and expect it will." At the same time reports were circulating in Dublin—did they come from Downing Street?—that the Government were preparing to take strong measures against the Ulster Unionist Council, and to arrest the leaders. In allusion to these reports the Dublin Correspondent of The Times telegraphed on the 18th of March: "Any man or Government that increases the danger by blundering or ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... drove him back to Downing Street in my phaeton, round the Park and down Knights bridge. I told him I found it difficult to judge of people's brains if ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... arrested was due largely to the L'Mandi and the influence they were able to exercise upon the European Powers by virtue of their military qualities. Downing Street was all for a permanent occupation of the chief city and the institution of a conventional regime; but the L'Mandi snarled, clicked their heels, and made jingling noises with their great swords, ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... other arm—was tried, but it was found to be too hot for the Australian climate, and was discarded along with Wellington boots and leggings. Until recently, Australian city artists and editors—who knew as much about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in general—seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence; and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of civilization with an eye on the backyard and a fear of the dog. English artists, by ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... so perfect that the man in the street is not quite sure who the President is. He knows that he is one of a council of seven, and that he is elected for one year, and that is all. In the Federal Palace, the Berne Westminster and Downing Street, the anonymity is almost as complete. Officers pass and repass in the corridors—one of the signs, like the waiting military motor cars at the door, of mobilization—but this does not change the spirit, simple ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pocket pay; And yet it can mean more... The man's indifference to his own vague doom Beamed out as one exalted trait in him, And showed the altitude of his rash dream!— Well, now I'll get me on to Downing Street, There to draw up a note to Talleyrand Retailing him the facts.—What signature Subscribed this desperate ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... I have realised bow sad it is that he has bequeathed us no ASQUITH legend. Always reserved and intent, he discouraged Press gossip to such a degree as actually to have turned the key on the Tenth Muse. Everybody else might lunch at the hospitable board in Downing Street, but interviewers had no chance. In vain did the Quexes of this frivolous city hope for even a crumb—there was nothing for them. Mr. ASQUITH came into office, held it, and left it without a single concession ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... representatives in assembled Parliament, to the "anomaly of the East Indian Empire." Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, "the orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one, resolute man had power to make war without check." The fatal war with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the matter of men and fame, was settled in England by "secret orders of two or ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... we were in Downing Street. There was quite a crowd of us there, and it had been an evening of exalted and roseate patriotism. I gazed up at the window of No. 10 and said, ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... country have for many years met on terms of perfect equality; but it has never been so with their statesmen and our statesmen, with their diplomatists and our diplomatists. Lombard Street and Wall Street can do business with each other on equal footing, but it is not so between Downing Street and the State office at Washington. The science of statesmanship has yet to be learned in the States, and certainly the highest lesson of that science, which teaches that honesty is ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the British Foreign Minister received, from a source of which we know nothing—but the Foreign Office in the Palmerstonian epoch was exceedingly well informed—a communication which, having read, he did not deposit among the official documents at Downing Street, but carefully sealed up and placed among his own private papers. His biographer, Sir Spencer Walpole, tells us all that is at present known about this mysterious piece of writing. "There is still among Lord John's papers," he says, "a simple document which ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... right, he had the boldness to carry it out at the risk of his official reputation. Sir Bartle Frere took a larger view of the duties of the governor of a great dependency than to constitute himself the flickering shadow of the Secretary of State in Downing Street, who, knowing little of the real interests of the colony, is himself only the reflection of those that hold the balance of power, to whom the subject is one of entire indifference, provided that ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... his disgust, for he deemed the annexation of the province to be necessary to the peace of all the surrounding districts. But this was neither the first nor the last occasion in the history of Cape government on which men of practical experience have had to give way before wise heads in Downing Street arm-chairs. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the junction of the Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of her colonies, with an arid soil, a population largely alien, and ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Smasher Mike the newspapers were at a loss. The Daily Flash indeed declared him to be the son of a popular Cabinet Minister, and triumphantly published photographs of Downing Street, the Woolsack, the Ladies' Gallery and Black Rod. The Daily Rocket, on the other hand, described him as a herculean docker, discovered and trained by a syndicate of wealthy Americans, and issued photographs of Tilbury Station, Plymouth Hoe and the Statue of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... and, at the corner of St. James' Place, met several gentlemen who had just come out of Brookes' Club-house. These saluted the companions as they passed, and said, "Capital account from Chiswick—Lord Howard says the chief will be in Downing Street on Monday." ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... descriptions of the tragedy that had been and was being enacted at Portsmouth that were constantly arriving in Downing Street left no possibility of doubt that the forts had been destroyed and the Spartiate blown up by torpedoes from the air—from which fact it was necessary to draw the terrible inference that the enemy had possessed themselves of the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... fortunate in finding that Lord Holdhurst was still in his chambers in Downing Street, and on Holmes sending in his card we were instantly shown up. The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable, and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. Standing on the rug between ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... thought we were acting Legion and the Gadarene Swine, but that must have been because of something faulty in our make-up. The sound of this great anthem was sufficiently impressive to make one long to hear the real Coalition shouting it all along Downing Street. It is a solo with chorus, you understand, and the Coalition come in with a great roar of excitement and fervour on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official traditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his instruments; and this not in a single department, but in all the departments ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as it became known to the petitioners that Governor Legge would not cancel the militia order, and that the petitions had been forwarded to Downing Street, it was decided to elect delegates to meet in Cumberland to take into consideration what steps should next be taken. Accordingly, representatives appointed by the petitioners met at Inverma, the home of Sheriff Allan. Jonathan Eddy and Sheriff Allan were there as members of the convention, ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... approving 'My word!' or 'My colonial!' to the night's debate. Mike was in full sympathy with their neighbours. Like him, they were deeply imbued with the spirit of revolt stirring in the land, and they were as eager to participate in the struggle that was to overthrow the rule of the nominees of Downing Street and strangle the hydra of official tyranny; but Done, although his sentiments were just as strongly on the side of the miners, was too profoundly concerned with the actions and interests of the moment to content himself with the society of the Peetrees and the discussion ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... unforeseen calamity of such stupendous magnitude at long range from Downing Street entailed delay; and public relief, waiting until official investigation had tardily reported the hardships, suffered ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the overthrow of a throne—even for a few hours before it became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... years, Mr. Ryland enjoyed the favour, nay the intimacy of every ruler (except Sir George Prevost) which this then mis- ruled colony owed to Downing Street. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... statements that Mr. MASEFIELD is taking lessons in the Fox Trot at Boar's Hill, and that Lord Northsquith is bringing back with him from Morocco a powerful troupe of Dancing Dervishes, with the intention of installing them ultimately in Downing Street. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... calamities which are always in store for the nation that is content to follow the breed of cowards who usually direct her great affairs. The day will come when she will violently and suddenly lose her former fighting renown to such an unmistakable extent that the plucky fishwives will march upon Downing Street, and if they can catch its usual inmates, will rend them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us, followed by the invasion of England, that John Bull will turn and rend ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... great tragedy—he was a clever man," said Brooke after dinner when they were discussing the misfortune at Downing Street; "a very clever man, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... lines have been laid between London and Paris, and it is now possible to pick up a telephone in Downing Street and speak directly to Mr. Lloyd George at any ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... whether war between the United States and Japan is possible or impossible. What Mr. Jones asks you is—what would be your position if it should take place? The little diatribe with which you have just favored me is exactly the reply we should have expected to receive formally from Downing Street. It isn't that sort of reply I want to take ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... committed which shocked the whole nation and aroused the utmost sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert. A half-crazy man named Macnaughten, who conceived he had received a political injury from Sir Robert Peel, planned to waylay and shoot the Premier in Downing Street. The man mistook his victim, and fatally wounded Sir Robert's private secretary, Mr. Drummond, who perished in the room of his chief. The plea of insanity accepted by the jury on the trial was so far set aside ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler |
