Word: humdrum
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...Romantic Rebels places Byron's life in perspective with the astonishing careers of Keats and Shelley, paints the three poets and their wives and many mistresses as unearthly children of genius whose love affairs, political activities and financial squabbles are like charming and pathetic parodies of a humdrum adult world. Both books devote much attention to the social background. At the time of Byron's fame, England was ruled by the fat, "superbly filthy" Prince of Wales, later George IV, who was known to have burst into tears when Beau Brummell criticized his clothing, and whose greatest achievement...
...some time the bull-necked War Minister has been weeding out of Japan's military elite officers hostile to his clique. Some of the roughest weeding, the most heartbreaking demotions and transfers of brilliant, high-strung fighters to humdrum posts, was done by General Nagata, assassinated last week to the high-strung satisfaction of an Army crowd younger than groveling old Hayashi...
...made him desperate. Mrs. Fitzherbert's rival, Lady Jersey, intrigued to break their relationship. Suddenly the prince abandoned Mrs. Fitzherbert and officially took to wife Princess Caroline of Brunswick in order to raise money quickly. The Princess of Wales was ugly, slovenly, insane "in a humdrum though crazy way" and suffered one of the most wretched married careers in royal history. Lady Jersey, appointed lady of the bedchamber, intercepted her letters, lied to her and about her, put Epsom Salts in her supper on her wedding night, humiliated her in public with the Prince, and continued "these delightful...
...this most sensational trial of a humdrum Paris summer the principals were strangely at cross purposes. The prisoner, Miss Joan Warner, hoped to get by with her professionally nude "Slave Dance" and yearned to have it declared Art. The judges frankly considered the case trivial but expected something brilliant from the great French criminal lawyer, Maitre Henry Torres, who appeared for the defense. The prosecutor, scandalously sympathetic with Miss Warner, observed before the trial opened: "It would be a shame to send Joan to prison. She is young and besides she is very pretty. I am not going...
...coming of age, getting married, going to jail, or meeting death. Thomas R. Marshall resignedly turned jester. Calvin Coolidge, until reprieved by Warren Harding's death, grew colder and stiffer day after day. Charles Gates Dawes flared up in boisterous self-assertion, only to settle back into the humdrum of a perfunctory office. Charles Curtis steadily inflated with the love of pomp. Two years ago John Nance Garner joined their company. By last week, as he neared the close of his third session as President of the Senate, it was apparent that he, too, had undergone a Vice-Presidential...