Social Victorians/Timeline/1882

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January 1882

The first production of Wagner's The Ring occurred in London, 1882; Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, attended.

28 January 1882, Saturday

Lily Langtry was appearing

in a comedy called Ours at the Haymarket Theatre. ... Having written to his son Prince George about Mrs. Langtry's successful debut, he travelled up three times from Sandringham to see her act. The dates, noted punctiliously in his engagement diary, are January 28, February 13 and March 15. The Prince's interest, of course, helped the box office, and when certain of her play's success Mrs. Langtry gave a midnight supper party which the Prince and his cousin the Duke of Cambridge attended.

February 1882

13 February 1882, Monday

Lily Langtry was appearing

in a comedy called Ours at the Haymarket Theatre. ... Having written to his son Prince George about Mrs. Langtry's successful debut, he travelled up three times from Sandringham to see her act. The dates, noted punctiliously in his engagement diary, are January 28, February 13 and March 15. The Prince's interest, of course, helped the box office, and when certain of her play's success Mrs. Langtry gave a midnight supper party which the Prince and his cousin the Duke of Cambridge attended.

26 February 1882, Sunday

James M. Whistler wrote Mary Montgomerie Singleton (Mary Montgomerie Lamb, pseud. Violet Fane), asking her to come to his "little breakfast next Sunday" (Whistler).

28 February 1882, Tuesday

"On the 28th of February, 1882, the Prince of Wales presided at a meeting held in the Banqueting Hall, St. James Palace, for the purpose of soliciting public support for founding a 'Royal College of Music.' … Larger meetings the Prince has frequently addressed, but never one more broadly representative of all the most distinguished and influential classes in the kingdom. The Ambassadors and Ministers of most of the Continental Powers were also among the audience." (Macauley 394)

March 1882

15 March 1882, Wednesday

Lily Langtry was appearing

in a comedy called Ours at the Haymarket Theatre. ... Having written to his son Prince George about Mrs. Langtry's successful debut, he travelled up three times from Sandringham to see her act. The dates, noted punctiliously in his engagement diary, are January 28, February 13 and March 15. The Prince's interest, of course, helped the box office, and when certain of her play's success Mrs. Langtry gave a midnight supper party which the Prince and his cousin the Duke of Cambridge attended.

20 March 1882, Monday

The Duke of Connaught met with and addressed, with “the Lord Mayor in the Chair,” “Merchants, Bankers, and leading men in the City, at the Mansion House” (Macauley 403).

April 1882

7 April 1882, Friday

Good Friday.

9 April 1882, Sunday

Easter Sunday.

19 April 1882, Wednesday

The first anniversary of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield's death. Lady Knightley reports in her Journals that "Quantities of people are walking about with primrose buttonholes to commemorate the day," primrose being his favorite flower according to the Queen (Journals 350). "But thousands of Lord Beaconsfield's more grateful admirers marked their deep sense of the solemnity of the anniversary and their affectionate interest in its observance, by wearing in their breasts that floral token of reverence and regard he had himself so emblematically adopted — the primrose. The very streets, in Westminster more particularly, were bright with that sweet and graceful flower in all directions; and in the fashionable drives and rides of / the parks it was memorably and significantly conspicuous" (Kebbel 324-325).

May 1882

6 May 1882, Saturday

Robert Milnes describes Brooks’s Club: "I recall a dramatic moment on May 6th, 1882, when we were lingering on in the dining-room after a pleasant meeting of the Fox Club, and Bill Kensington, our popular Whip, rushed into the room saying, 'They have murdered Freddy Cavendish!' I drove down to 10 Downing Street with another member to hear the story from Edward Hamilton, who told us that Mr. Gladstone had just gone across to Carlton House Terrace to break the news to Lady Frederick" (Pope-Hennessy Lord Crewe 16).

11 May 1882, Thursday

Lady Knightley is presented to the Queen, who gave her a "very cordial reception" (Journals 353).

21 May 1882, Sunday

The Bishop of Winchester had a dinner party, which the Knightleys attended, along with Mr. Heywood Sumner, Lord Selborne, Lady Strangford, and "Prince Ghika, the Roumanian Minister, with his wife" (Knightsley's Journals 353).

24 May 1882, Wednesday

Derby Day.

According to the Morning Post, <quote>Dowager Viscountess Downe's dance at 8, Belgrave-square, instead of the 23d. / Lady Brassey's "at home," 24, Park-lane. / Mrs. Bateson de Yarburgh's dance, instead of the 15th inst. / Mr. Charles Halle's third chamber music concert, Grosvenor Gallery, at half-past eight, assisted by Madame Norman-Neruda and Herr Franz Neruda. / Chevalier and Mrs. Desanges's "at home," at 16, Stratford-place, from four to seven o'clock. / Royal Horticultural Society's great flower show of the season and horticultural implement exhibition, this day and tomorrow. Band of the Royal Horse Guards each day.</quote> ("Arrangements for This Day." The Morning Post Wednesday, 24 May 1882: p. 5 [of 8], Col. 6A).

28 May 1882, Sunday

Whit Sunday.

July 1882

13 July 1882, Thursday

Garden party at Marlborough House, reported in Lady Knightley's Journals (355).

August 1882

28 August 1882, Monday

Summer Bank Holiday.

September 1882

4 September 1882, Monday

The Times published J.L. Joynes's "A Political Tour of Ireland" on 4 September, in which Joynes described being arrested with Henry George "by a gang of Galway policemen who took him [George] to be a revolutionary Fenian" (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 127).

5 September 1882, Tuesday

American economist Henry George spoke on Land Nationalization to a large crowd, attracted to the talk by J.L. Joynes's 4 September Times story, that included George Bernard Shaw (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 127–28).

7 September 1882, Thursday

Bret Harte <quote>was one of a select group Osgood managed to scare up for a dinner at the Hotel Continental in London on September 7, 1882 — Aldrich, Hay, Howells, Henry James, Clarence King, Moncure Conway, Charles Dudley Warner, and Edwin Booth among them. "It was a most remarkable coincidence to find all these men together in London," he [Harte] reported to Anna; indeed, "it would have been most remarkable for New York or Boston." His most vivid impression of Howells was that he had "grown fat." On his part, Howells remarked later that Harte resembed "a French marquis of the ancien regime" or "an American actor made up" for the role. It was the last time they would meet.</quote> (Gary Schamhorst. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. The Oklahoma Western Biographies. Vol. 17. University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Page 167)

October 1882

Sometime in October 1882, Annie Horniman met Moina Bergson at the Slade School of Art, run by Alphone Legros (AEFH memo 14 July 1898, qtd Howe 64).

31 October 1882, Tuesday

Halloween.

November 1882

5 November 1882, Sunday

Guy Fawkes Day.

25 November 1882, Saturday

Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, or the Peer and the Peri, opened at the Savory: "A glittering crowd attended the first night, including Captain (later Captain Sir) Eyre Massey Shaw, head of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, whom the Fairy Queen apostrophizes in the second act ('Oh, Captain Shaw/Type of true love kept under/Could they brigade with cold cascade/Quench my great love, I wonder?'). On the first night, Alice Barnett as the Fairy Queen sang the verses directly to the Captain, to the great delight of the audience" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolanthe). Clement Scott was there? Who wrote reviews and for which performances?

December 1882

9 December 1882, Saturday

Prime Minister Gladstone attended Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe with his son, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, M.P., sitting in the 4th row of the orchestra stalls. (The Era 1882 December 9 45(2307): 7, col. 3 [unsigned news item]. Rpt online Savoy Operas http://savoyoperas.org.uk/iolanthe/iomiscell.html.) Or did they attend on the 4th?

25 December 1882, Monday

Christmas Day

26 December 1882, Tuesday

Boxing day

Works Cited

• Knightly.
• Macaulay, James, Ed. Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales: 1863–1888. London: J. Murray, 1889. Google Books, retrieved 22 February 2010. Actually, “Founding the Royal College of Music”: 394-403.
• Whistler, James McNeill. Letter to Mary Montgomerie Singleton (Mary Montgomerie Lamb, pseud. Violet Fane). 22 February 1882. The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler. System Number: 11133. http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?rs=4&nameid=Fane_V&sr=1&initial=F (accessed November 2016).