shadow of britain

Chapter 720 Good Brothers for Life
A successful liar no longer needs to lie to survive, because the people who have been deceived have become his advocates.

—Shakespeare, Hamlet

Professor Hastings' history classes are always pleasant and relaxed, especially considering that there was a good audience in the class today.

For this long-time gold medal winner in the history program at the University of London, he can give a unique lecture on British history without any preparation. His lectures not only instill traditional concepts, but also incorporate many modern elements that are in line with the founding philosophy of the University of London.

Especially when talking about the part where the nobles forced King John at Runnymede, he also used his imagination appropriately in combination with historical records, trying to make it as exciting as possible.

"On the morning of June 1215, 6, at Runnymede Meadow, the rebellious nobles and clergy were anxiously waiting for the king's arrival. Their expressions were tense and serious, and they held a piece of parchment in their hands. Their followers and soldiers were fully armed and ambushed in the bushes not far behind them. The armor and weapons flashed brightly in the morning sun. This was for self-protection, and also because the nobles and clergy had made the worst plan: if King John did not keep his promise, then they could only use other means to make King John fulfill his promise.

Fortunately, King John, who had no support and no money to recruit mercenaries, did not make a decision that would embarrass everyone. After a short wait, King John came on horseback accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other senior clergy. After getting off the horse, he quickly signed his name on this ordinary parchment and then left. This ordinary parchment was later known as the Magna Carta.

But just two months later, after collecting sufficient troops and military supplies, King John immediately declared war on the opposing nobles, declared the Magna Carta illegal and invalid, and refused to implement any of the clauses stipulated in it. At the same time, in order to preserve his throne, he also surrendered to Pope Innocent III, signed a document to hand over England to the Roman Catholic Church, and regarded himself as a vassal of the Pope. Innocent III immediately issued a papal decree, declaring that in the name of St. Peter, he would never forgive the offense of the English nobles, and excommunicated all English subjects who participated in the rebellion against King John, excommunicating them with the "law of excommunication", and openly supported King John in suppressing the rebellion of the domestic nobles.

With the support of the Pope, King John's mercenaries won victory after victory in the early days of the civil war. The nobles finally realized that King John was just using the Magna Carta as a delaying tactic to buy time to fight against the noble opposition, and that he had no sincerity in implementing the terms of the Magna Carta. Therefore, in order to break the pressure from King John and the Roman Catholic Church, the opposition nobles in England swore allegiance to Louis, the Dauphin of France, and made Louis the King of England, and invited him to lead his army to London to protect and safeguard the legitimate rights of the English nobles..."

Conroy went to the University of London today just to ask Arthur for help in solving the problem of the role of lover, but what he didn't expect was that this police scholar who was famous in London for science and art was also well versed in history and even had the ability to give public lectures in university classrooms.

But Conroy thought again and it seemed understandable that Arthur had this ability.

Because this gentleman once served as the Deputy Attorney General of the London District Public Prosecutor's Office, and many officials of the Home Office had privately praised him: Officer Arthur Hastings' legal literacy was admirable, and his mastery of various laws was comparable to that of many magistrates in London.

Although in the context of the time, this sentence was more like a satire on the magistrate's lack of knowledge and skills, which was not even as good as that of a policeman who had not studied at the Inns of Court.

But this also indirectly shows that Arthur is indeed good at law.

Otherwise, many cases in Greenwich would not have been handed over to Arthur for prosecution when he was just an ordinary police officer.

Being familiar with the laws means that he should be good at history, because many laws in the UK, which follows case law, are directly related to various historical events.

All in all, Sir Arthur Hastings's personal achievements are untenable in many areas, such as music, electromagnetism, or literature.

But the only thing that should not be questioned is his achievements in policing, history and law, because he risked his life for them.

The two-hour class was not enough for Arthur to show off his recent masterpiece, "A History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Hanoverian Dynasty", which he had compiled with great effort, but in Conroy's view, these were enough for him to label Arthur as knowledgeable.

The unfortunate Conroy saw Arthur's most unshakable side at first sight when he opened the door, which made him take off his hat to the diplomat who "resisted Lord Palmerston's immoral foreign policy and resigned in anger."

A man of great promise recognized by Lord Brougham, the most brilliant achievement of Jeremy Bentham's educational career, Faraday believed that he was the best among young scientists...

Such a talent should be forgiven even if he made some minor mistakes, but Conroy really couldn't understand why he was directly abandoned by Whitehall.

But it is normal that he cannot understand it. After all, Arthur has made many small mistakes and even did such outrageous acts as spying on members of parliament and cabinet ministers.

Normal people wouldn’t even think of walking on this road. Who would have thought that there was such an unusual road?

Arthur walked down the platform. Before he could catch his breath, Conroy came up to him with a smile: "Sir Arthur, you really surprised me. I thought you..."

Arthur took out a cigar box from his arms, opened the lid with his fingernails and held it in front of Conroy: "You thought I was a weirdo who hides in the laboratory all day, like Frankenstein?"

Conroy took a cigar and smiled: "Society does have misunderstandings about scientists."

"It's not a misunderstanding." Arthur lit up his cigar, "Because there's a guy like that in school right now. He eats, drinks, defecates and urinates in the lab. He won't even open the door when someone brings him food. He insists that food be placed on the windowsill for him to pick up himself."

"Is there really such a person?"

"Haven't you read Mr. Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle?" Arthur exhaled smoke from his nose. "The world is full of strange things. This is called species diversity. There are many weird scientists. It just happens that I am relatively normal."

Conroy sighed and said, "Now that you remind me of this, I suddenly remembered that I once heard the Duke of Devonshire say that his uncle Henry Cavendish also seemed to be a weirdo."

Arthur had heard many people in the Royal Society complain about Cavendish's story before.

When Cavendish was still alive, many scholars in the Royal Society were young people who had just entered the academic world. When they saw such a great scholar, they naturally couldn't hide their excitement and wanted to ask him for advice.

However, when they excitedly came forward to greet him, Cavendish would always run away at the first opportunity.

After a while, they figured out a way to deal with Cavendish.

For example, never look Mr. Cavendish in the eye, or he will run away the moment your eyes make contact. The correct way to talk to him is to stand near him and look into the void in front of you, pretending to talk to yourself. If he is interested in what you say, he will respond to you.

If you were lucky enough to have dinner at Cavendish's house, you would most likely eat lamb shanks. Because Cavendish ate lamb shanks for dinner every day, he only served lamb shanks to guests. In order to reduce contact with servants, he would leave a note for the servants every day to tell them what they wanted for dinner. However, the note always said "a lamb shank", but the time for dinner might be slightly different.

If he has multiple customers (which might happen only once every few years), he might tweak the menu slightly, increasing the number of lamb legs from one to two.

Perhaps it was because he had dealt with Cavendish when he was young that Faraday was extremely tolerant of Wheatstone's series of behaviors that were close to being a bastard.

However, Wheatstone is not a 100% replica of Cavendish's character.

As we all know, Cavendish was born into the family of the Duke of Devonshire. His father was the fifth son of the second Duke of Devonshire, and his mother was the fourth daughter of the Duke of Kent. Therefore, Cavendish inherited a large amount of inheritance from his uncles and elders who had no descendants when he was very young. After his parents passed away, his wealth increased even more.

When Cavendish died, his assets totaled more than 130 million pounds, which was one of the highest in Britain. However, apart from lamb legs and books, Cavendish had almost no expenses. It can be said that he only had eight sets of clothes for four seasons and five kinds of food. He had no concept of money.

The most talked-about story of the Royal Society is this: Once, a friend introduced an old man to help him sort out books. Because the old man was poor and pitiful, the friend knew that Cavendish was generous, so he expected Cavendish to give him a good reward afterwards. But after the work was completed, Cavendish did not mention a word about the reward. When the friend found out, he had to remind Cavendish that the old man was penniless and hoped that he could help him a little.

When Cavendish learned about the old man's situation, he asked in surprise, "How can I help him?"

"Give him some living expenses."

Hearing this, Cavendish hurriedly took out a check from his pocket and asked as he wrote, "Is 2 pounds enough?"

This frightened my friend so much that he jumped up from his chair and shouted, "Too much, too much!"

Wheatstone was certainly not as rich as Cavendish, nor as frugal as him.

Give Cavendish a leg of lamb and let him live in a stable and do research.

But it was obvious that no matter how many legs of mutton he was given, he could not live next to a slaughter-market.

Moreover, although Wheatstone is not as rich as Cavendish, he has an investment hobby.

It was not until Whitstone moved into the University of London a while ago that Arthur finally understood why this guy was willing to work at the university, contrary to his usual behavior, and how he ended up living in a laboratory next to a slaughterhouse.

Wheatstone had sold his mansion in Regent Crescent half a year earlier to pay off his debts, and there was not much left of the wealth he had accumulated from the sale of phonographs.

The culprit behind all this is the telegraph.

While Arthur was still at Scotland Yard, he used police funds to have Wheatstone build several telegraph lines from Scotland Yard headquarters to major police stations in the area.

After Wheatstone went to Göttingen to attend the European Electromagnetic Congress, he was inspired by Gauss, Weber and others, and believed that wired telegraph would definitely be the main means of communication in the future.

So after returning to London, Wheatstone confidently founded the first telegraph company in London, Europe and the world - the English Electromagnetic Telegraph Company.

Moreover, he invested all his savings into building telegraph stations next to every station in London and established a huge telegraph network covering all areas of London.

However, just when this guy was about to lie on the bed and count his money, he suddenly discovered that the telegraph company's return on investment did not seem as good as he had imagined.

For most people, spending a shilling to send a message from Greenwich to Hackney would be madness.

In order to increase usage, Wheatstone did think about lowering the price of telegraph, but the construction cost of telegraph line was already 165 pounds per mile, so how much cheaper could it be?
Ordinary people had little demand for telegraphs, and those government departments that really needed fast information transmission looked down on this telegraph network that only covered the city of London, so naturally, Wheatstone was on the brink of bankruptcy not long after.

In order to maintain the company's operations, the university teaching position that he had always looked down upon became a hot commodity in Whetstone's eyes.

At one point, he even considered joining King's College, which would have been extremely disrespectful to Arthur.

Fortunately, Arthur intervened decisively and stopped it in time, so this "tragedy" was avoided.

Moreover, considering their long-term friendship, Arthur also took the initiative to propose to merge Wheatstone's England Electromagnetic Telegraph Company into the Empire Publishing Company through a cross-share swap. Although Empire Publishing Company would have to bear some debts, well...

Isn't it right to stick up for your friends?

Besides, whether a business makes money or loses money depends on who is running it.

The current acceptance of wired telegraph is indeed not high, but the change only needs an opportunity.

What's more, Wheatstone still had so many telegraph stations, and these telegraph stations were all located in prime locations adjacent to horse carriage stations, so the operating costs of the telegraph could be fully recovered by selling newspapers and magazines.

As for the construction cost of telegraph lines?
Whiston had already paid all the money, and there would be no additional construction expenses, only some maintenance expenses, so Arthur had nothing to worry about.

In fact, when Wheatstone first learned that Arthur was willing to take over his losing business, he wanted to sell all his shares at once.

But first of all, Arthur felt that he couldn't always catch the same fool. Rather than eating alone, the biggest reason why he could get to where he is today was that everyone made money together.

Secondly, he really did not have the financial resources to swallow up all the shares in Whitstone's hands. Even if the other party was willing to give him a 50% discount, it would still be a solid 30,000 pounds. Where could Arthur find so many young Italians now?

Aside from Young Italy, Young England was a small Tory group led by Disraeli, and the students of Young Germany got along well with him in Göttingen. As for Young Russia? It was lucky that Young Russia could save itself from going to Siberia, so how could it be able to provide funds for the activities to the Sir?

While Arthur was chatting with Conroy about the telegraph business and Mr. Wheatstone's recent unfortunate circumstances, he was also recalling the time when he, Gauss and Weber were setting up the telegraph line at the observatory in Göttingen.

When Conroy heard those European-famous names coming out of Arthur's mouth one after another, he believed in this authority on electromagnetism even more.

He thought about it and wanted to raise the issue of Miss Lily's role, but he didn't know where to start. After thinking for a long time, he suddenly thought of an appropriate opportunity: "Mrs. Leven and Mrs. Cowper have often mentioned your name at the Allmark Club recently, saying that no pianist in the club can match you. You haven't been to the club since you returned to London? There is a party at the club tomorrow. Don't you plan to give the two ladies a surprise?"

When Arthur heard Mrs. Leven's name, his heart skipped a beat: "Mrs. Leven? Are you telling the truth?"

Conroy certainly knew about the delicate relationship between Arthur and Lady Leven. Regardless of the fact that Lady Leven had always been the object of a scandal with Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston, her identity as the sister of Count Benckendorff, director of the Third Bureau of the Imperial Office of the Tsarist Russia, was enough to make Arthur, the "Caucasian criminal", suffer.

Conroy smiled and said, "Although you did have some problems in the Caucasus, things have to be resolved. If you want to clear up the misunderstanding, I'm afraid you can't find a better middleman than Mrs. Leven."

(End of this chapter)