DURING a visit to the Parthenon in 1850, Florence Nightingale discovered local children playing with a little ball of fluff', which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a young owl. Perhaps (quite likely) money changed hands in order that Nightingale could become the bird's new owner. Appropriately enough, bearing in mind the classical associations of owls, she named it Athena.
According to Florence's sister Parthenope, Athena very quickly became quite mannerly and took her meals regularly from her mistress's hand'. All didn't end well, however. As Florence and 38 other women volunteer nurses prepared to leave for the Crimea in 1854, the owl was 'put in a room by herself... [where] the cold and isolation were too much... [and] she fell down in a fit'. Distraught at Athena's unnecessary demise, Nightingale was reportedly heard to say: 'Poor little beastie, it was odd how much I loved you.'
An equal affection for wildlife as unlikely pets was apparent when the child Beatrix Potter kept, according to Mark Bryant, author of Casanova's Parrot, 'rabbits, frogs, lizards and hedgehogs'. Not wanting to be parted from them for even the short duration of a family holiday, 'Beatrix would... take her menagerie with her... [all] packed away in various boxes and hutches'.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 05, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 05, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
