{"product_id":"2940013684942","title":"The Thames Valley Catastrophe","description":"It can scarcely be necessary for me to mention, I suppose, at this\u003cbr\u003etime of day, that I was one of the earliest and fullest observers of\u003cbr\u003ethe sad series of events which finally brought about the transference\u003cbr\u003eof the seat of Government of these islands from London to Manchester.\u003cbr\u003eNor need I allude here to the conspicuous position which my narrative\u003cbr\u003enaturally occupies in the Blue-book on the Thames Valley Catastrophe\u003cbr\u003e(vol. ii., part vii), ordered by Parliament in its preliminary Session\u003cbr\u003eunder the new regime at Birmingham. But I think it also incumbent upon\u003cbr\u003eme, for the benefit of posterity, to supplement that necessarily dry\u003cbr\u003eand formal statement by a more circumstantial account of my personal\u003cbr\u003eadventures during the terrible period.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI am aware, of course, that my poor little story can possess little\u003cbr\u003einterest for our contemporaries, wearied out as they are with details\u003cbr\u003eof the disaster, and surfeited with tedious scientific discussions as\u003cbr\u003eto its origin and nature. But in after years, I venture to believe,\u003cbr\u003ewhen the crowning calamity of the nineteenth century has grown\u003cbr\u003epicturesque and, so to speak, ivy-clad, by reason of its remoteness\u003cbr\u003e(like the Great Plague or the Great Fire of London with ourselves),\u003cbr\u003ethe world may possibly desire to hear how this unparalleled convulsion\u003cbr\u003eaffected the feelings and fortunes of a single family in the middle\u003cbr\u003erank of life, and in a part of London neither squalid nor fashionable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is such personal touches of human nature that give reality to\u003cbr\u003ehistory, which without them must become, as a great writer has finely\u003cbr\u003esaid, nothing more than an old almanac. I shall not apologize,\u003cbr\u003etherefore, for being frankly egoistic and domestic in my reminiscences\u003cbr\u003eof that appalling day: for I know that those who desire to seek\u003cbr\u003escientific information on the subject will look for it, not in vain,\u003cbr\u003ein the eight bulky volumes of the recent Blue-book. I shall concern\u003cbr\u003emyself here with the great event merely as it appeared to myself, a\u003cbr\u003eGovernment servant of the second grade, and in its relations to my own\u003cbr\u003ewife, my home, and my children.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the morning of the 21st of August, in the memorable year of the\u003cbr\u003ecalamity, I happened to be at Cookham, a pleasant and pretty village\u003cbr\u003ewhich then occupied the western bank of the Thames just below the spot\u003cbr\u003ewhere the Look-out Tower of the Earthquake and Eruption Department now\u003cbr\u003edominates the whole wide plain of the Glassy Rock Desert. In place of\u003cbr\u003ethe black lake of basalt which young people see nowadays winding its\u003cbr\u003esolid bays in and out among the grassy downs, most men still living\u003cbr\u003ecan well remember a gracious and smiling valley, threaded in the midst\u003cbr\u003eby a beautiful river.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had cycled down from London the evening before (thus forestalling my\u003cbr\u003eholiday), and had spent the night at a tolerable inn in the village.\u003cbr\u003eBy a curious coincidence, the only other visitor at the little hotel\u003cbr\u003ethat night was a fellow-cyclist, an American, George W. Ward by name,\u003cbr\u003ewho had come over with his \"wheel,\" as he called it, for six weeks in\u003cbr\u003eEngland, in order to investigate the geology of our southern counties\u003cbr\u003efor himself, and to compare it with that of the far western cretaceous\u003cbr\u003esystem. I venture to describe this as a curious coincidence, because,\u003cbr\u003eas it happened, the mere accident of my meeting him gave me my first\u003cbr\u003einkling of the very existence of that singular phenomenon of which we\u003cbr\u003ewere all so soon to receive a startling example. I had never so much\u003cbr\u003eas heard before of fissure-eruptions; and if I had not heard of them\u003cbr\u003efrom Ward that evening, I might not have recognised at sight the\u003cbr\u003eactuality when it first appeared, and therefore I might have been\u003cbr\u003einvolved in the general disaster. In which case, of course, this\u003cbr\u003eunpretentious narrative would never have been written.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070200692976,"sku":"2940013684942","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013684942_p0.jpg?v=1763583973","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013684942","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}