Edward Poynter, Mary Constance Wyndham (Lady Elcho), 1886

Mary leans back on a chaise, gazing into the distance. She is surrounded by aestheticism's accoutrements: a japonaiserie screen; blue and white ceramic vases. Her hair is fashionably shirred; her waist, in her plain mustard-yellow gown, tiny (the envy of her friends, she said proudly). One hand loosely holds a sketchbook, another book lies unopened before her. She looks deep in thought: a beauty with greater things on her mind. [A]ged twenty-four, a mother of two, [...] just a few months after the death of her beloved friend Laura Tennant and while her relationship with Arthur Balfour was growing ever deeper. Mary's family later criticized this portrait as far too solemn. Yet perhaps in Mary's forlorn expression Poynter had seen some of the turmoil in which Mary found herself at this stage of her life. — Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams

"In 1905, while serving as Prime Minister, Balfour presided over the passage of the Aliens Act. This legislation put the first restrictions on immigration into Great Britain, and it was primarily aimed at restricting Jewish immigration. According to historians, Balfour had personally delivered passionate speeches about the imperative to restrict the wave of Jews fleeing the Russian Empire from entering Britain.

It may seem astonishing that Balfour, whose support of the Zionist cause has made him a hero among Jews, would have implemented anti-Jewish laws. But the truth is his support of Zionism stemmed from the exact same source as his desire to limit Jewish immigration to Britain."

Oil painting of Arthur Balfour, by Hungarian Jewish artist Philip de László (d. 1937), 1914, reproduced in The Illustrated London News, vol. 165, no. 4445, 5 July 1924. (In the public domain.)

Downloaded from the Internet Archive and cropped to remove theoretically copyrighted text.

Palestine Action activists destroyed a 1914 painting of Arthur James Balfour, the colonial administrator and signatory of the Balfour Declaration.

Palestine Action stated, "An activist slashed the homage and sprayed the artwork with red paint, symbolising the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. "

"Arthur Balfour, then UK Foreign secretary, issued a declaration which promised to build “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, where the majority of the indigenous population were not Jewish. He gave away the Palestinians homeland — a land that wasn’t his to give away."

"After the Declaration, until 1948, the British burnt down indigenous villages to prepare the way; with this came arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, sexual violence including rape against women and men, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment to repress Palestinian resistance."

"The British were initiating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, fulfilling the Zionist aim to build their ‘home’ over the top of what were Palestinian communities, towns, villages, farms and ancestral land, rich in heritage, culture and ancient archeological history."

"In the past 154 days of genocide in Gaza, Israel has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, injured over 72,000 and displaced over 1.9million — 80% of the Gaza population."

"Britain’s support for the continued colonisation of Palestine hasn’t wavered since 1917.

"Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms supplier, who use captive Palestinians in Gaza as a human laboratory to develop their weapons, use Britain as a manufacturing outpost. The Israeli weapons maker build weaponry in factories across the country and work closely with the British government.

"Palestine Action vows to continue their direct campaign until Elbit is shut down and British complicity with the colonisation of Palestine ends. "

(˶ ˘ ³˘)ˆᵕ ˆ˶).∘☆˚♡

Arthur + some friends and family

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

i wish there was more albert and charlotte side missions...

i wish we had more stuff to do with charles...

i wish Arthur, Charlotte, Albert and Charles could all just hang out together... appreciating nature together... being silly...

they just seem like they'd all make very good friends...

or a really cute polycule...

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Vol. 1), 1918-38, entry for 29th June 1923

— Friday 29th June Lunched at Lady Cunard’s. The usual potpourri and brilliant chat. She told Lord Balfour he was like God and ‘yet so Christ-like’! Dined with Michael Horby¹ at Shelley House² and we went to Stop Flirting, the popular revue in which two charming little people, Americans, called Fred and Adele Astaire, are the stars.³ Later a most lovely ball at Someries House⁴ ... Lady Zia Wernher’s.⁵ It was successful indeed and starts a new era in entertaining .... I was presented to a tallish gentleman, the Crown Prince of Sweden⁶ ... he is to marry the Lady Louise Mountbatten.⁷ It will be announced next week. What luck for her as she has only about £300 a year and is living in obscurity at Kensington Palace. The Mountbattens after being degraded during the war⁸ to the rank of mere marquises and earls are now much on the ascendant ... they are ever a lucky family, poverty-stricken, they specialise in brilliant marriages. I sat in the garden with Lady Desborough⁹ and found her witty and wily as ever ... does everyone realise, as I do, that she is the character of the age?

—

1. Michael Charles St John Hornby (1899-1987), son of St John Hornby, was the founding partner of WH Smith.

2. The Hornby family’s house in Chelsea.

3. Frederick Austerlitz (1899-1987), who took the name Fred Astaire, was an American actor, dancer and singer who achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s in a series of Hollywood musicals renowned for their dance routines; and his sister Adele Marie (1896-1981), with whom he began a vaudeville act as children as 1905, when they changed their name to Astaire. By 1923 they had a Broadway act, which they were touring in London.

4. A Crown State property rented by the Wernhers in Regent’s Park, designed by John Nash and damaged by bombing during the Second World War. It was demolished in 1958.

5. Countess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Torby (1892-1977), elder daughter of the Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia, and therefore a great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. She married, in 1917, Harold Wernher (1893-1973), later 3rd Bt. She was granted the rank and precedence of an earl’s daughter after her marriage and stopped using her Russian title, being known as Lady Zia Wernher thereafter.

6. Oscar Fredrik Wilhelm Olaf Gustaf Adolf (1882-1973), from 1950 King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. He was the widower of Princess Margaret of Connaught (1882-1920), whom he had married in 1905; she was the cousin of King George V, and had died suddenly while eight months pregnant with her sixth child. 7. Louise Alexandra Marie Irene Mountbatten (1889-1965), previously Princess Louise of Battenberg, married the Crown Prince of Sweden (vide supra) in 1923, and was Queen Consort of Sweden from 1950. She was daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg, who became 1st Marquess of Milford Haven when renouncing the German titles in 1917. She had earlier turned down proposals from King Manuel II of Portugal and had been secretly engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, who was unable to marry her because he had no money; a second engagement was to Stuart Hill, an artist, whom she met while nursing in the Great War and who turned out to be homosexual. 8. There was a protracted debate between Lloyd George, King George V and Lord Stamfordham, the King’s private secretary, in 1917 about the titles to be bestowed on German members of the King’s family who had pledged allegiance to him and had been prepared to forfeit their German ranks. The King was cautioned against granting too many titles and to avoid bestowing any dukedoms. The Mountbatten marquessate was a compromise and their rise would indeed be unstoppable, with the surname of members of the House of Windsor becoming Mountbatten-Windsor in 1960, thirteen years after the marriage of the future Queen Elizabeth II to Philip Mountbatten. 9. Ethel ‘Ettie’ Fane (1867-1952), married in 1887 William Henry Grenfell (1855-1945), 1st Baron Desborough, a former Liberal MP who had joined the Conservatives in 1893 over his disagreement with the second Home Rule Bill for Ireland. Their three sons (qqv) predeceased them, two killed in the Great War and a third in a car crash.

You are my Tahiti

Short scene of John meeting Charlotte. Excuse his beard 😂

*pushes my foot back and forth in the dust* I'm just saying that Charlotte's kiss on Arthur's cheek is very important to me and I don't know if you guys realise how much of a big fucking deal that was in the 19th century, because men and women couldn't even be alone in the same room together unless they were related in some way or already married, and the fact that she kissed him is just a major thing for an unmarried, middle/upperclass woman of that time. But it's cool... I care about this a normal amount!

charlotte balfour is just chilling in the most remote point of the map with a white moose and two cougars and one dead husband living in her backyard, just "oh woe is me i'm in the middle of the haunted woods biome being submissive and robbable with my bazillion big titty banker bucks and huge naturals" and you're telling me i'm not supposed to think she's fucking up to something

anyway new criminal charlotte fic chapter. it's on ao3