Word: wellington
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Master of Ceremonies Archibald Absalom Wellington, smooth as a dagger and just as menacing, introduces his sullen, smoke-eyed cast. Deodatus Village is a half-dressed epitome of black buckdom. The strumpet he struts for is whore-cum-ballet-dancer Stephanie Virtue Secret-rose Diop--"Virtue" for short, which neatly sums up the situation. The curate Diouf pleads for passive religious acceptance; Felicity Trollop Pardon shrieks "Dahomey!" and "Africa!" with an epileptic frenzy; Augusta Snow says little and wears anger like a nimbus round her pout-mouthed head. Genet further burlesque's white perceptions of black names by dubbing...
...characteristic remark, utterly self-assured and mockingly arrogant. But when Bernard Law Montgomery died at 88 last week at Hampshire, England, there was no shortage of experts who agreed-almost. Historian A.J.P. Taylor felt that Montgomery was "the best British field commander since Wellington." Dwight Eisenhower, World War II boss of the brusque and banty (5 ft. 8 in.) field marshal, said that Monty was tops at winning the admiration of his men and in fighting set-piece battles. Others called Montgomery s overrated and unimaginative as a general and spiteful and cantankerous as a man. Whatever the final verdict...
...Historian Michael Howard has written, "It is doubtful whether he will be regarded by posterity as one of the great captains of history." But in the popular mind, the hero of El Alamein probably has a secure place alongside, if not Alexander and Napoleon, then at least Marlborough and Wellington, which even Monty might agree is acceptable soldier's company...
...When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte...
...funniest, concerns the House of Lords. Gilbert has his Lord Mountararat (a name suggesting the aristocracy's excessive reverence for ancestry) proclaim that "If there is a single institution that is unsusceptible of any improvement whatsoever, it is the House of the Lords." This recalls the Duke of Wellington's remark a half-century earlier that Parliament was perfect--on the eve of the Reform Bill...