Coronation And Deadly Folly

What a scene, Napoleon, self-crowned and proclaimed leader of all the world crowns his Empress Josephine, resplendent in diamonds as the powers of the Church look on, scowling at the blasphemy of the thing. Triomphe! for the Corsican upstart and his Consort. Lesueur captures the moment, with pre-industrial grandeur:

Triumph indeed, but hubris met nemesis in the Iron Duke, Wellington, who put paid to Boney's scheme of a new world order with himself in charge, smashing the upstart at Waterloo. It's said that clubland in St. James was awakened to the fact of allied victory in 1815 by parades of jubilant people carrying captured French Eagles.

So much for Boney. Wellington stated, laconically, "They came on in the same old way and we beat them back, in the same old way." You can imagine the 50,000 casualties on the field of battle. Here's the Duke in older and seemingly kinder visage:

Josephine Bonaparte died in 1814, a year before her beloved husband met disaster at Waterloo.

Sic transit,

LSP

Hotel Food

 

The Berkley Channelling Melanis

Hotel food. Perhaps you've encountered its beastliness, pricey corporate slop served up as some kind of "treat." Huh. But I recall exceptions to the rule, the Berkley in Knightsbridge served up understated excellence and the Dorchester on Hyde Park wasn't shabby either. 

The Good Old Connaught

Then there was the famous Connaught in Mayfair; go to Mass 'round the corner and fall back to the Connaught for a roast, cell phones not allowed. All famous in their day, justifiably, but let's not forget the Stafford, just off St. James.

Sitting cheek-by-jowl to palatial Spencer House, the Stafford was all about Gilded Age luxury and had wartime cachet to boot, being the WWII Officers' Mess of various allied nations, namely America and Canada. Hence the hotel's American Bar.

The Awesome American Bar

I used to love the American Bar, where you could order up a Club BLT and get perfection, but got to know the dining room menu too well, to the point of exhaustion, it was a work thing. Pan to one night seated at starched linen and gleaming glassware. A waiter approaches and asks in a disturbing French accent, "Sir?"

A moment's reflection, "I should like a cheese omelette and chips." The beastly Dagenhamite sneered at my off the menu order and replied in fakey French, "Would sir like ketchup on his chips?" Stunned by his dam impudence I sat silent while Viscount Furness thundered, beating the table, "He'll eat what he dam well wants!"

The Dorchester, Obvs

The waiter retreated, suitably chastened, and returned with a very decent omelette.

Go to the Stafford if you're in St. James and enjoy the American Bar, I think it remains unscathed from the ravages of the last three decades. Avoid the dining room though, they've ruined it, last I saw.

Apotheosis of Awesome (Boodles)

While you're in the area, gaze in wonder at White's Beau Window and Boodles' equivalent, frown at the forbidding Whiggish facade of Brook's and take solace in the Carlton Club, formerly Arthur's, where, apparently, you're not allowed to smoke anymore. Rubbish.

Cheers,

LSP

New Years Challenge

A few years back and there you have it, I was in 'Nam, Cheltenham. It being New Year's Eve it seemed right to visit some friends, regimental tie and blazer no less. And there we were, "Happy New Year, fella," I offered some massive biker, "Is it, F***r?" came the electric synapse, ultra dopamine quick response.

I looked at the offensive mountain of oily denim, leather, hair and worse and said, "Devil take you and twice as fast." He didn't, fortunately, because the owners, ahem, of the house broke in, "Leave him alone, he's Adolf." And so he did.

Funny thing, I was the last man standing at that biker event, at 4++ in the morning. Lightweights, obviously.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Crockford's

 

You, the discerning and gentle reader, will be pleased to know that I'm not a gambling man. Far be it from me to wager fast and loose on the vagaries of Dog Coin, the Peoples' Currency, and other speculation. That said, others have gambled and played deep, not least at Crockford's on St. James in the 1820s.

William Crockford was a fishmonger, born and raised at Temple Bar in London but, with a quick mathematical mind and attention to odds raised himself to a professional gambler, winning a massive fortune at cards, 100,000 pounds, millions now, at a game with various nobility in a tavern off St. James.

The Fishmonger gambler sensibly invested this money in a club, No. 50 St. James, over and against White's. This aristocratic gambling hell became all the rage, as did its play. For example:

The great majority of the club’s members were serious, indeed inveterate, gamblers. The equivalent of about $40 million is believed to have changed hands over Crockford’s first two seasons; Lord Rivers once lost £23,000 ($3 million) in a single evening, and the Earl of Sefton, a wastrel of whom the diarist Charles Greville observed that “his natural parts were excessively lively, but his education had been wholly neglected,” lost about £250,000 (almost $33 million today) over a period of years. He died owing Crockford more than $5 million more, a debt that his son felt obliged to discharge.

 

Crockford retired a multi-millionaire (not a socialist) in the 1840s and lost most of his fortune, apparently, on ill-advised bets on the Derby. Captain Gronow reckons, on reflection, "One may safely say, without exaggeration, that Crockford won the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation.” Quite a thing, we're talking millions and millions of pounds by 1820s/30s reckoning.

The Clubhouse still exists today and you can see it on your left as you stroll towards White's famous bay window. It was bought by a Russian oligarch around a decade ago and then squatted. Rumours that the DLC are purchasing this fine Regency building are precisely that, rumours.

Arduus Ad Solem,

LSP

Time Travel!

It's Regency London, the Westminster Pit, some five years after the Corsican upstart met his nemesis at Waterloo. Candlelit faces gleam with anticipation, and it's on, "Gennellmen, place your bets!" 

A monkey emerges from shadow into the ring, club high, fangs barred, simian snarling. Yes, this is Jacco and he's not alone, a dog growls, ferocious, it is Puss, the favourite. Fight.

A flash of gold in the wings, of real money, "Wager a guinea on the monkey, eh? Devil take the hindmost." Hat, stock, cane and guinea purse agree, "Hindmost? Twice up and double on the ape, damme." And the monkey wins against the odds. Triumph. A short clip back to St. James, White's and...

It's North Central Texas, Anno Domini 2021, with a hot sun blazing from a blue sky. "How much you want for this pipe?" Silence is golden, "You tell me," and business concluded. Not as racy perhaps as the Pit, but no less good for all that. 

If you look hard enough, there's a frontier, country, equivalency between the two.

Time travel's weird like that.

LSP

Sunday Sermon

 

St. James says, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

At enmity with God, what a terrifying position to be in, and isn't that where we are now as a nation. For example, how many billions of dollars were made in profit over 30 years of war, which we curiously didn't win, and how much of that money was spent on the love of God and neighbor? None, to speak of. On the contrary, the cash flowed into the pockets of our rulers and their puppets, making them even richer than they were already.

Again, can you imagine any country claiming with any legitimacy that they worship God when they subsidize abortion to the tune of over $600 million annually. That's almost $2 million dollars a day, to kill children in the womb of a mother. A country which does that doesn't worship God, it worships some other thing.

I'll cut to the chase. America, to say nothing of any other country, Anglosphere, we're looking at you, has become worldly. We've become, as a nation, friends of the world, and people who love the world do all in their power to possess as much of the object of their desire as they can.

Thus, driven by prideful greed and vainglorious ambition, the worldly heap up for themselves money, possessions, power, and influence. After all, what's the point of all that cash when you can't fly your private jet to Davos and scheme the greater imposition of your will upon others. And the result?

James is clear. Discord, fighting, division, killing, and every kind of "vile practice." Is that not us, as a country, right now? I'll spare you the examples, all you have to do is throw a dart at the internet and pull out a story. But suffice to say, America's at enmity with God. 

The worldly, who rule and influence us, promote pride instead of humility, hatred instead of love, disbelief instead of faith, division instead of peace, death instead of life, and iniquity instead of righteousness. They are, when we pause to reflect, against the qualities which Christ revealed to us on the Cross.

They hate that, they're opposed to it, and mock, deride and blaspheme it, they are enemies of God. What a terrible position to be in, not least on account of its telos or end. Writing to the Philippians, St. Paul describes their character and fate, "They are enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their god is the belly and they glory in their shame."

St. James is no less fierce, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire."

The end of the way of the cross is paradoxically very different. As Christ teaches his uncomprehending disciples on the way to Capernaum, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” 

He will rise, triumphant over Hell and death.

The way of humility, faith, love and righteousness is the way of life, the way of the Cross. Choose that and live by the grace of God.

Here Endeth the Lesson,

LSP

PS. Do you not think "Friends of The World" sounds like a Soros funded NGO? Just sayn.