Introduction

[Callie]

Hi Lynn,
I wasn’t aware that Dickens spoke well of Cromwell. Now my curiosity as piqued as to why.

Hi Archaic,
Thank you for the warm welcome. It is good to know I’m not the only one who waited in the wings before finally taking the plunge. I feel like a bit of an interloper but I’m sure that will pass. Meeting the members has been lovely.

Dave is the philatelist and postal historian. Sorry for the confusion. I noticed how I wrote that sentence and it was a bit confusing. My main area of study is WWII, particularly in the European Theater and more specifically Himmler and the Holocaust. It sounds rather morbid I know.

Btw, I know exactly what you’re talking about with kids and mailing letters. They usually get that blank stare and look of utter confusion.

I see you are from the Seattle area. I love it there I have family in that area and always enjoy my time there when I go.

Regards,
Cheryl

[lynn cates]

Dickens

Hello Callie. Dickens seems to have favoured Cromwell because he upheld England. Here is a snippet from Dickens' "Child's History of England" ch. 33, Part 2.

"There was not at that time, in England or anywhere else, a man so
able to govern the country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled
with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax on the Royalists
(but not until they had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely,
and as the times required. He caused England to be so respected
abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen who have governed it
under kings and queens in later days would have taken a leaf out of
Oliver Cromwell's book. He sent bold Admiral Blake to the
Mediterranean Sea, to make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand
pounds for injuries he had done to British subjects, and spoliation
he had committed on English merchants. He further despatched him
and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to have every English
ship and every English man delivered up to him that had been taken
by pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously done; and it
began to be thoroughly well known, all over the world, that England
was governed by a man in earnest, who would not allow the English
name to be insulted or slighted anywhere."

Cheers.
LC

[Bridewell]

Is a person with an extreme love of stamp-collecting a philatelophiliac??

Stamp Collecting as an extreme sport - interesting! perhaps we should really go for it and start eating After Eight mints at half past seven?

Regards, Bridewell

[Robert]

Hi Cheryl and welcome

I'm afraid I don't know much about Cromwell (I thought that Naomi Campbell fought in his model army) but I guess he had a good head on his shoulders, as did Charles the - no, scrub that.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Colin

Extreme stamp collecting? Sounds fun...every tenth hinge the gum contains LSD!

Hi Robert

Well at one point we came close to King Oliver you know...by the by, look up sometime what happened during the Restoration to the bodies of the regicides...so much for Merry Old England!

All the best

Dave

[lynn cates]

Head on his shoulders, or . . .

Hello Robert. Scrub what? The head? You must be thinking of Jeremy Bentham. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

L S D

Hello Dave. I prefer my LSD in my sporran. (Right. New system now.)

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

You're quite right Lynn...we've all been decimated now...

Dave

[Robert]

Poor old Charlie : unusually chaste for a royal, and with an art connoisseur's eye - but in matters military and political, a dunderhead.

[lynn cates]

C word

Hello Dave. Franco-American conspiracy, I calls it.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

The hunt is on.

Hello Robert. Did you mean chased?

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

Stamp Collecting as an extreme sport - interesting! perhaps we should really go for it and start eating After Eight mints at half past seven?

You're the radical adventuresome type, aren't you Bridey?


Hi Callie, you're right; I did get your hobby mixed up with Dave's. That's what I get for reading a thread backwards & then changing direction!

WWII, huh? I study it quite a bit myself. I think I find Himmler to be the creepiest of all the Nazis; he just oozes pudgy loathsomeness... ugh, those little piggy eyes!
I honestly can't bear to look at him.

How did they ever sell their theory of a 'Master Race' when Hitler, Himmler, Goering & Goebbels could have been the poster boys for utter revulsion? Talk about "degenerates"...I've never been able to figure that one out.

(Something tells me Robert's going to pipe up with the words to a little 1940's song about spherical objects... )

Best regards,
Archaic

[Robert]

Hi Lynn

Yes, he was chased a bit, and he was captured, because unlike his son he never hid in the Royal Oak - he wasn't a pub person.

Bunny :

' It took Samuel Beckett to point out the irony in this Nazi obsession with the creation of a race of “supermen.” An `Aryan’, he wrote, must be blonde like Hitler, thin like Göring, handsome like Goebbels, virile like Röhm – and be named Rosenberg." '

(http://www.holocaustresearchproject....han/index.html)

[Callie]

Lynn-
Thank you for the information and especially for the source! Dickens was quite complimentary of Cromwell. I’m on the verge of being shocked.

Robert- Thank you for the welcome and I’m sure you are right about Naomi.

Archaic- Ahh, another thing we have in common! I couldn’t agree with you more about Himmler he was such a malicious little pedagogue. He always had that air of utter ruthlessness, which of course he was.

Funny you should bring up the Nazi echelon not having the Nordic ideal. The topic bugged Himmler enough that he often addressed it in his private addresses to the SS. Here is but one example:

Summer 1938 speech at the National Socialist School for Political Education(NAPOLA):

“It is not permissible that anyone who believes his external appearance especially racially desirable should fancy himself to be more valuable and better than someone else who, if you like, has dark hair. Were we to allow that then the consequence would be that in the shortest time, in place of the social class battle which has been overcome, a racial class battle would emerge, a difference between high and low which would be a misfortune to our Volk…”

That said, had he not been in charge of the SS he would have never been allowed in because he didn’t have the “right” features or height to gain admittance.

Regards,

Cheryl

[lynn cates]

preconceived notions

Hello Callie. Yes, shocked. I had expected an encomium on Henry VIII and good Queen Bess. But he rather dismisses them.

So much for preconceived notions.

Cheers.
LC