Biography of Queen Charlotte

Biography of Queen Charlotte Queen Charlotte (born Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz) was the Queen of England from 1761–1818. Her husband, King George III, suffered from mental illness, and Charlotte ultimately served as his guardian until her death. Charlotte is also known for the possibility that she possessed multiracial heritage, which would make her Englands first multiracial royal. Fast Facts: Queen Charlotte Full Name: Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-StrelitzKnown For: Queen of England (1761–1818)Born: May 19, 1744 in Mirow, Germany Died:  November 17, 1818 in Kew, EnglandSpouses Name: King George III Early Life Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was born in 1744, the eighth child of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg and his wife, Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen, at the family castle in Mirow, Germany. Like other young ladies of her station, Charlotte was educated at home by private tutors. Charlotte was taught the basics of language, music, and art, but much of her education was focused on domestic life and household management, in preparation for future as a wife and mother. Charlotte and her siblings were also educated in religious matters by a priest who lived with the family. When Charlotte was seventeen years old, she was sent from Germany to marry George III, five years her senior. George had ascended to the throne following the death of his father, George II, and was as yet unmarried. Since he would soon need an heir of his own, and Charlotte was from a minor duchy in the northern part of Germany that had no political machinations, she must have seemed like a perfect match. Charlotte arrived in England on September 7, 1761, and the next day, met her prospective groom for the first time. She and George were married that evening, just a few hours after meeting. Charlotte the Queen Although she spoke no English at first, Charlotte learned the language of her new country quickly. Her heavy German accent and tumultuous relationship with George’s mother, Princess Augusta, made it difficult for her to adapt to English court life. Although Charlotte attempted to expand her social circle, Augusta challenged her every step of the way, even going as far as to replace Charlotte’s German ladies-in-waiting with English ladies of Augusta’s choosing. Heritage Images / Getty Images Over the years, Charlotte and George had fifteen children together, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. She was pregnant regularly, yet still managed to find time to organize the decoration of a lodge in Windsor Park, which was where she and her family spent most of their time. In addition, she educated herself about diplomatic matters, and exercised a quiet and discreet influence over her husband’s political affairs, both foreign and domestic. In particular, she became involved in English-German relations, and may have had some influence in British intervention in Bavaria. Charlotte and George were avid patrons of the arts, taking a particular interest in German music and composers. Their court hosted performances by Bach and Mozart, and they enjoyed the compositions of Handel and many others. Charlotte was also an active gardener, with a scientific interest in botany that led her to help expand Kew Gardens. The Madness of King George Charlotte’s husband suffered from intermittent bouts of mental illness throughout his adult life. During the first episode in 1765, George’s mother Augusta and Prime Minister Lord Bute managed to keep Charlotte completely unaware of what was happening. In addition, they made sure she was kept in the dark about the Regency Bill, which stated that in the event of George’s full incapacity, Charlotte herself would become Regent. Two decades later, in 1788, George became ill again, and this time it was much worse. By now, Charlotte was well aware of the Regency Bill, but still had to battle against the Prince of Wales, who had designs of his own on the Regency. When George recovered the following year, Charlotte deliberately sent a message by refusing to allow the Prince of Wales to attend a ball held in honor of the Kings return to health. Charlotte and the prince reconciled in 1791. Gradually, over the next few years, George descended into permanent madness. In 1804, Charlotte moved into separate quarters, and seems to have adopted a policy of avoiding her husband entirely. By 1811, George was declared insane and placed under Charlottes guardianship, as per the Regency Bill of 1789. This scenario remained the same until Charlottes death in 1818. Print Collector / Getty Images Potential Multiracial Heritage Charlottes contemporaries described her as having an unmistakable African appearance. Historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom contends that although Charlotte was German, her family was distantly descended from a 13th-century black ancestor. Other historians take issue with Valdes theory, arguing that with a black ancestor nine generations back, its nearly impossible to consider Charlotte multi-racial. During her reign as Queen, Charlotte was the subject of racially-charged insults about her appearance. Sir Walter Scott said that her relatives from the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz were ill-colored, orang-outang looking figures, with black eyes and hook-noses. Charlottes physician, Baron Stockmar, described her as having â€Å"a true mulatto face.† Conclusive evidence of Charlottes ancestry has likely been lost to history. Nevertheless, it remains important to reflect upon this element of her story, as well as to consider how the concepts of race and royalty play out in society today. Sources Blakemore, Erin. â€Å"Meghan Markle Might Not Be the First Mixed-Race British Royal.† History.com, AE Television Networks, www.history.com/news/biracial-royalty-meghan-markle-queen-charlotte.Jeffries, Stuart. â€Å"Stuart Jeffries: Was the Consort of George III Britains First Black Queen?† The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Mar. 2009, www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/12/race-monarchy.â€Å"Philippa of Hainault.† Charles II., www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_35.html.Waxman, Olivia B. â€Å"Is Meghan Markle the First Black Royal? Why We Dont Know.† Time, Time, 18 May 2018, time.com/5279784/prince-harry-meghan-markle-first-black-mixed-race-royal/.

G.K. Chestertons A Piece of Chalk

G.K. Chesterton's 'A Piece of Chalk' One of the most prolific British authors of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton is best known today for his novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and his 51 short stories featuring the amateur detective Father Brown. In addition, he was a master of the essay     called the only literary form that confesses, in its very name, that the rash act known as writing is really a leap in the dark. The word essay comes from the French word essayer, meaning to try or attempt. In the preface to his essay collection Tremendous Trifles (1909), Chesterton encourages us to be ocular athletes: Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see the startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. In this fleeting sketch from that collection, Chesterton relies on two common items brown paper and a piece of chalk as starting points for some thought-provoking meditations. A Piece of Chalk I remember one splendid morning, all blue and silver, in the summer holidays when I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of doing nothing in particular, and put on a hat of some sort and picked up a walking-stick, and put six very bright-colored chalks in my pocket. I then went into the kitchen (which, along with the rest of the house, belonged to a very square and sensible old woman in a Sussex village), and asked the owner and occupant of the kitchen if she had any brown paper. She had a great deal; in fact, she had too much; and she mistook the purpose and the rationale of the existence of brown paper. She seemed to have an idea that if a person wanted brown paper he must be wanting to tie up parcels; which was the last thing I wanted to do; indeed, it is a thing which I have found to be beyond my mental capacity. Hence she dwelt very much on the varying qualities of toughness and endurance in the material. I explained to her that I only wanted to draw pictures on it, and th at I did not want them to endure in the least; and that from my point of view, therefore, it was a question, not of tough consistency, but of responsive surface, a thing comparatively irrelevant in a parcel. When she understood that I wanted to draw she offered to overwhelm me with note-paper. I then tried to explain the rather delicate logical shade, that I not only liked brown paper, but liked the quality of brownness in paper, just as I like the quality of brownness in October woods, or in beer. Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-colored chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness. All this I said (in an off-hand way) to the old woman, and I put the brown paper in my pocket along with the chalks, and possibly other things. I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in ones pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long, and the age of the great epics is past. With my stick and my knife, my chalks and my brown paper, I went out on to the great downs... I crossed one swell of living turf after another, looking for a place to sit down and draw. Do not, for heavens sake, imagine I was going to sketch from Nature. I was going to draw devils and seraphim, and blind old gods that men worshipped before the dawn of right, and saints in robes of angry crimson, and seas of strange green, and all the sacred or monstrous symbols that look so well in bright colors on brown paper. They are much better worth drawing than Nature; also they are much easier to draw. When a cow came slouching by in the field next to me, a mere artist might have drawn it; but I always get wrong in the hind legs of quadrupeds. So I drew the soul of a cow; which I saw there plainly walking before me in the sunlight; and the soul was all purple and silver, and had seven horns and the mystery that belongs to all beasts. But though I could not with a crayon get the best out of the landscape, it does not follow that the landscape was not getting the best out of me. And this , I think, is the mistake that people make about the old poets who lived before Wordsworth, and were supposed not to care very much about Nature because they did not describe it much. They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills, but they sat on the great hills to write it. The gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. ...The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo. But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. In a sense our age has realized this fact, and expressed it in our sullen costume. For if it were really true that white was a blank and colorless thing, negative and non-committal, then white would be used instead of black and grey for the funereal dress of this pessimistic period. Which is not the case. Meanwhile, I could not find my chalk. I sat on the hill in a sort of despair. There was no town near at which it was even remotely probable there would be such a thing as an artists colorman. And yet, without any white, my absurd little pictures would be as pointless as the world would be if there were no good people in it. I stared stupidly round, racking my brain for expedients. Then I suddenly stood up and roared with laughter, again and again, so that the cows stared at me and called a committee. Imagine a man in the Sahara regretting that he had no sand for his hour-glass. Imagine a gentleman in mid-ocean wishing that he had brought some salt water with him for his chemical experiments. I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk. The landscape was made entirely of white chalk. White chalk was piled more miles until it met the sky. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on: it did not mark so well as the shop chalks do, but it gave the effect. And I stood there in a trance of pleasure, realizing that this Southern England is not only a grand peninsula, and a tradition and a civilization; it is something even more admirable. It is a piece of chalk.