"Downing Street" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There were in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one; and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with most of the public offices, Mocenigo did propose to pull down and rebuild, and which ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE, Sunday, Apr.7,'95. DEAR MR. ROGERS,—..... Stanley is magnificently housed in London, in a grand mansion in the midst of the official world, right off Downing Street and Whitehall. He had an extraordinary assemblage of brains and fame there to meet me—thirty or forty (both sexes) at dinner, and more than a hundred came in, after dinner. Kept it up till after midnight. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, Thomas Drummond, had gained the affections of the people by his sympathetic statesmanship. An epigrammatic speaker said in the House of Commons that Peel governed England, O'Connell governed Ireland, and the Whigs governed Downing Street. It was all coming to an end. Drummond died, the Whigs went out of office, Peel governed Ireland, and England too. Froude just saw the last phase of O'Connellism, and he did not like it. In politics he never looked very far below the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... doing his best to deal with the accruing winter discontent. He had a plan of his own; and he was also furnished with a plan that had been drawn up by the civilian authorities in Downing Street and South Africa, who thought that the walls of Jericho would fall to the sound of a Proclamation. In August, 1901, a legal document was served on the Boers, much in the same way that a writ is served upon a debtor. In it they were declared to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... hands are clean, whose record is stainless—the Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts. The man who is to rule South Africa must be a great soldier, not a tyrant, not a martinet, not a bundle of red tape tied up with a Downing Street bow and adorned with frills. The negro trouble is looming large on the African borders, and the negro chiefs know that in Lord Roberts they have their master. We must not pander to them to the injury of the Dutch, or how are we to weld Dutch and British into a national whole? Our ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... free institutions, and even our habits and manners, in colonies at a distance from the Palace of Westminster.' He trusted the Colonies, and refused to believe that all the wisdom which was profitable to direct their affairs was centred in Downing Street. His attitude was sympathetic and generous, and at the same time it ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... on Tuesday last as having been seen entering the side door of No. 11, Downing Street. It was, of course, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... Helena attributed much of his success in the field to the fact that he was not hampered by governments at home. Every modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have envied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity and compression the men of Downing Street, who without military experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over- ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen, deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... surprise and annoyance Sir George Younger—the keeper of the Tory purse, and manager of their party—had, with a courage undreamt of by his flock, put a veto upon this; and in a polite and public letter given the Coalition Liberals notice to quit. This independent action upset the influential Downing Street press, entertained the Free Liberals, and bewildered the docile Conservatives. The latter having no Prime Minister of their own, are not only deeply indebted to Mr. Lloyd George for all he has done for them, but are committed ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... The big men over here are always taking trips to England, being feted and made much of in Downing Street—Imperialist Policy and that sort of thing—I can ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... give bitterness to the taunt hurled at them by a Radical orator: "Why! the right honorable member for Tamworth (Peel) governs England. The honorable and learned member for Dublin (O'Connell) governs England. The Whigs govern nothing but Downing Street. The right honorable member for Tamworth is contented with power without place or patronage, and the Whigs are contented with place and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... French ruler and our fiercest foe!— Maybe 'twas but a hoax to pocket pay; And yet it can mean more... The man's indifference to his own vague doom Beamed out as one exalted trait in him, And showed the altitude of his rash dream!— Well, now I'll get me on to Downing Street, There to draw up a note to Talleyrand Retailing him the facts.—What signature Subscribed this ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... she retorted, "I might reply that Jesus Christ, from all we know of him, might reign wonderfully in the Kingdom of Heaven, but he certainly wouldn't be able to keep together a Cabinet in Downing Street! Still, I am beginning to believe in your sincerity. Do you think that Paul ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and tore the note into pieces. Then he rang for his servant. "A bath and some clean clothes quickly," he ordered. "While I am changing, ring up Downing Street and see if Sir James is there. If not, find out exactly where he is. I must see him within half an hour. Afterwards, get me ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in and about palatial Westminster, and he found that St. Giles's was disagreeable. The ways about Pall Mall and across the Park to Parliament Street, or to the Treasury, were much pleasanter, and the new offices in Downing Street, already half built, absorbed all that interest which he had hitherto been able to take in the suggested but uncommenced erection of new Law Courts in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn. As he made ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Coalitionists as the victor is seen making his way to the Table, and then the speech, so unvarying in its construction that I fancy there must be a sealed pattern for it in the archives of No. 10, Downing Street. First comes a recital of the immense difficulties of the problems to be solved—in this case including a really serious difference of opinion with our good friends the French; then a little comic relief at the expense of his arch-critic in the Press, who on this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... morning after our vicar's arrival in London he attended at the Petty Bag Office. It was situated in the close neighbourhood of Downing Street and the higher governmental gods; and though the building itself was not much, seeing that it was shored up on one side, that it bulged out in the front, was foul with smoke, dingy with dirt, and was devoid of any single architectural grace or modern scientific improvement, nevertheless ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Downing Street one house at least which looked as though it had been there forever and ever, but just here it was most commonplace and present-century in setting, and the roar of traffic was in my ears. But I am sure that I saw Richmond Hill House plainly,—that distinguished ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... more favourable. Belgium seemed on the point of extinction, Italy was a mere geographical expression, Hungary was abject and broken. In the narrower but even more significant sphere of British colonial policy the passion for centralisation had not yet been understood in all its folly. Downing Street still functioned as the Dublin Castle of the Empire. The possibility of the overseas possessions developing that rich, strong individuality which characterises them to-day would have been dismissed with horror. The ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... resignation for any account that may be brought of the progress of the new colony, by some wandering merchant-vessel. Despatches, frequently dated twelve months previously, during which time they have been making the tour of all the oceans at present known upon the globe, are brought to Downing Street; and are then thrown aside, or at least are never attended to, probably because they are too old to be deemed interesting. No matter how pressing and immediate the wants of the colony, chance alone affords ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... in front of the gates to reach St. Margaret's he wondered what was doing in there. He had the vaguest notion where people like the Prime Minister and Sir Edward Grey would be that night. He thought possibly with the King, or in Downing Street. And then he heard his name being called, and turned to see Sir Robert ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... see anything like the Whitley of my youth. [Footnote: Since these pages were penned, the memory of the blacksmith's cottage at Whitley has been vividly brought back to me under rather singular circumstances. In the spring of 1895 I was dining in Downing Street with Lord Rosebery, then Prime Minister. Next to me at dinner was seated Sir James Joicey, the millionaire colliery owner and Member of Parliament. Sir James is, like myself, a Northumbrian, and our conversation ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... from the facts that I'm showing, The state of the case is exceedingly sad; If Thespis's people go on as they're going, Olympus will certainly go to the bad. From Jupiter downward there isn't a dab in it, All of 'em quibble and shuffle and shirk, A premier in Downing Street forming a cabinet, Couldn't find people less fit for ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... him back to Downing Street in my phaeton, round the Park and down Knights bridge. I told him I found it difficult to judge of people's brains ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... the Duchess of Devonshire took fright, and did not venture to stay at Devonshire House for many nights after dusk, but took refuge at Lord Clermont's in Berkeley Square, sleeping on a sofa in the drawing-room. In Downing Street, Lord North was dining with a party his brother, Colonel North, Mr. Eden, afterward Lord Auckland, the Honourable John St. John, General Fraser, and Count Malzen, the Prussian minister. The little square then surrounding Downing Street was filled with the mob. "Who ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Parliament, resolved to rouse public opinion by breaking tradesmen's windows, it overlooked that the English are a nation of shopkeepers, and that the public opinion thus roused would be for the first time almost unreservedly on the side of the Government. And when the Cabinet of Downing Street, moved to responsive recklessness, raided the quarters of the Women's Social and Political Union and indicted the leaders for criminal conspiracy, it equally overlooked an essential factor of the situation. The Cabinet of the conspiracy was at least as much a restraint ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... states his meaning to have been "that the misrule of the Government in Canada, and the monopolizing selfish domination of such men as had lately (though but a small faction of the people) resisted all improvement and reform, would lose the countenance of the authorities in Downing Street, and leave the people in freedom to manage their ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Mr. Ryland enjoyed the favour, nay the intimacy of every ruler (except Sir George Prevost) which this then mis- ruled colony owed to Downing Street. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Sea Treaty, have already done something to convince people that the two leaders saw much further ahead in 1854 and 1855 than men who had passed all their lives in foreign chanceries and the purlieus of Downing Street. ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... strength of a rumour that the seed of Irish peace had been planted in Downing Street, Mr. HOGGE promptly essayed to root it up in order to observe its progress towards fruition. The PRIME MINISTER, however, gave no encouragement to his well-intentioned efforts. Nor did he satisfy Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY'S curiosity as to whether Father O'FLANAGAN was "a Sinn Feiner on the bridge," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... Carlton Gardens, which was made over to them by Sir John Gladstone; then again at 13 Carlton House Terrace; and when Mr. Gladstone was in office, at the official residence of the Prime Minister, Downing Street. In 1850 Mr. Gladstone succeeded to his patrimony, and in 1856 he bought 11 Carlton House Terrace, which was his London house for twenty years; and he subsequently lived for four years at 73 Harley Street. During the parliamentary recess Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone divided their time between ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... one letter in this old packet which moves me specially. It was on the 1st of March, 1894, that Mr. Gladstone said "Good-by" to his Cabinet in the Cabinet room at Downing Street, and a little later in the afternoon walked away for the last time from the House of Commons. No one who has read it will forget the telling of that episode, in Mr. Morley's biography, with what concentration, what dignity!—worthy alike of the subject and of the admirable man of letters—himself ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... street, and, at the corner of St. James' Place, met several gentlemen who had just come out of Brookes' Club-house. These saluted the companions as they passed, and said, "Capital account from Chiswick—Lord Howard says the chief will be in Downing Street on Monday." ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... agreement there will be surely, in the extent of 3,000 miles, creeks and bays out of which small vessels may come, and run for Jamaica or the Bahamas where the cargoes might be transhipped. But it is not for Downing Street to suggest such plans to Cheapside ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Bagpipes (Vol. ii., p. 266.).—A public-house of considerable notoriety, with this sign, existed long at the corner of Downing Street, next to King Street. It was also used as a chop-house, and frequented by many of those connected with the public offices in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... a graveyard. Put the resources of this organization at my command, give me a week to make the essential preparations, select a time of national crisis when the Houses of Parliament are sitting and the Cabinet meets in Downing Street with the King attending or in Buckingham ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... enterprise, or of the achievements of Germans in distant lands. They are thinking of the extension of the German State. British influence beyond the seas has been built up during the last four centuries by the character and achievements of British pioneers. Downing Street has seldom helped, often hindered, and generally only ratified the accomplished facts of British settlement and influence. That is not the Prussian theory or the Prussian method. It is for the State to win ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... intercourse by steam with Britain, we can scarcely realize how far separated Canada was from England fifty years ago. Besides this, the channels through which that intercourse was carried on were few, and often of a partizan character. "Downing Street [Colonial Office] influence," and "Downing Street interference with Canadian rights," were popular and favourite topics of declamation and appeal with the leaders of a large section of the community. Not that there did not exist, in many instances, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... mortal. Friedrich Wilhelm's 80,000 well-drilled troops remained very actual with their firelocks and iron ramrods, and did a thing or two, there being a Captain over them. Friedrich Wilhelm's Directorium, well-drilled Prussian Downing Street, every man steady at his duty, and no wind to be wasted where silence was better, did likewise very authentically remain, —and still remains. Nothing of genuine and human that Friedrich Wilhelm did but remained and remains an inheritance, not the smallest ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... already been under question for nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come out of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major's criticism. This Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that the control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April. No other lands under the sun were so blest, in the way of government, as were the colonies with which he had been ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the terrific things that I know. When more sovereigns die I can divulge more. I hope to keep on divulging at intervals for years. But I am compelled to be cautious. My relations with the Wilhelmstrasse, with Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay, are so intimate, and my footing with the Yildiz Kiosk and the Waldorf-Astoria and Childs' Restaurants are so delicate, that a single faux pas might prove ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... representatives in assembled Parliament, to the "anomaly of the East Indian Empire." Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, "the orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one, resolute man had power to make war without check." The fatal war with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the matter of men and fame, was settled in England by "secret ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... you in advance, Mrs. Quarrier. If we are long away from England, the chances are I shall have to make my next call upon you in Downing Street!" ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... picked his way amongst the ruins to Downing Street, and was soon in consultation with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... more absurd," Greville had written concerning the relations which Melbourne revealed to him as subsisting between Downing Street and the Vatican, and the quotation is as appropriate to these later overtures. "Can anything be more absurd or anomalous than such relations as these? The law prohibits any intercourse with Rome, and the Government, whose business it is to enforce the law, establishes a regular, but ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... voting defection if it were withheld or even delayed, would not necessarily be a surrender, but it would look like one. Opponents would be only too ready to attribute ungenerous motives. Hence the anxiety in the crowded Court, and in the little groups gathered round the tape-machines in Whitehall and Downing Street and other affected centres. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... George who sat in council in Downing Street was no dreaming pacifist. He who had tried to stop the irresistible flood of the Boer War now rode the full swell of the storm that threatened for the moment ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... of the wide British Dominion there rises one complaint against the ineffectuality of what are nicknamed our "red-tape" establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial Office, Foreign Office and the others, in Downing Street and the neighborhood. To me individually these branches of human business are little known; but every British citizen and reflective passer-by has occasion to wonder much, and inquire earnestly, concerning them. To all men ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... local circumstances to occupy too large a share of your thoughts. It is true that these are the days of your relaxation. Still, there is the Princess for you to think of. After all, she has us in her power. The merest whisper in Downing Street, and ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... continued and, in parts of the South, embittered faction led to more bloodshed. In England the news of Yorktown caused a commotion. When Lord George Germain received the first despatch he drove with one or two colleagues to the Prime Minister's house in Downing Street. A friend asked Lord George how Lord North had taken the news. "As he would have taken a ball in the breast," he replied; "for he opened his arms, exclaiming wildly, as he paced up and down the apartment during a few minutes, 'Oh God! it is all over,' words which ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... fortunate in finding that Lord Holdhurst was still in his chambers in Downing Street, and on Holmes sending in his card we were instantly shown up. The statesman received us with that old-fashioned courtesy for which he is remarkable, and seated us on the two luxuriant lounges on either side of the fireplace. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ventilating passages beneath the floor of the chamber that they might in some sense be witnesses of the greatest feat in the lifetime of an illustrious old man of eighty. Around Palace Yard an enormous crowd surged, waiting to give the veteran a welcome as he drove up from Downing Street. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... himself into Mitchener's chair). Yes: it is indeed Balsquith. It has come to this: that the only way that the Prime Minister of England can get from Downing Street to the War Office is by assuming this disguise; shrieking "VOTES for Women"; and chaining himself to your doorscraper. They were at the corner in force. They cheered me. Bellachristina herself was there. She shook my hand and told me to say I was a vegetarian, ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... of Saturday, the 6th, Lord Alanmere had called upon Mr. Balfour in Downing Street, and laid the duplicates of the secret treaty between France and Russia, and copies of all the memoranda appertaining to it, before him, and had convinced him of their authenticity. At the same time he showed him plans of the war-balloons, of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old Berlin to help her. If all that is worth while in London were built in the spirit of Downing Street and Whitehall and the statue of Nurse Cavell, it might be said that London was not ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... that the Colonial Office was forced to annex New Zealand. In the face of the causes making for annexation sketched in the last chapter, the officials hung back to the last. In 1837 a body of persons appeared on the scene, and opened siege before Downing Street, whom even permanent officials could not ignore. They were composed of men of good standing, in some cases of rank and even personal distinction. They were not traders, but colonizers, and as such could not be ignored, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... kinds of politicians. We know that. He did it as Ivery. They rather liked him, for he was clever and flattered them, and they told him things. But God knows what he saw and heard in his other personalities. For all I know he may have breakfasted at Downing Street with letters of introduction from President Wilson, or visited the Grand Fleet as a distinguished neutral. Then think of the women; how they talk. We're the leakiest society on earth, and we safeguard ourselves by keeping dangerous people ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... And learn the wonders working there— And I'll be hanged if you don't stare! Talk of your animal magnetists, And that wave of the hand no soul resists, Not all its witcheries can compete With the friendly beckon towards Downing Street, Which a Premier gives to one who wishes To taste of the Treasury loaves and fishes. It actually lifts the lucky elf, Thus acted upon, above himself;— He jumps to a state of clairvoyance, And is placeman, statesman, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... coolness in that fat Lord North which was the most provoking thing that the Opposition had ever to encounter from him. He heard me with half-shut eyes. When I had finished a long violent speech—which I made striding about his room in Downing Street, and gesticulating with all the energy of an Irishman—he opened one eye, smiled, and asked me gently if I had done. On my replying in the affirmative, he said, 'Well, Mr. Barry, I'll answer you, point ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... protection to the British shipping visiting them. I have been told, that the Spanish and Dutch Governments have refused to receive or acknowledge Consuls in their Eastern possessions. If this is the case, the evil might be remedied by a note from Downing Street. The other ports of Netherlands India are, perhaps, not of sufficient importance, as regards English commerce, to authorise the expense of Consular appointments. If the opinion of so humble an individual as myself could be supposed to reach the ears of the British ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... be rather fun if you did. And look here—I will be a statesman, if you like, and go up to Downing Street every day, and come back in the evening and tell you all ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... foaming horses drove in upon the pier as the tug pulled the steamer out upon the Hudson. Its single occupant was an English government agent bearing a special message from the British embassador at Washington to Downing Street, London. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... youthful ensigns—dreams from which Rood Hall emerged crowned with the towers of Belvoir or Raby, and looking over subject lands and manors wrested from the nefarious usurpation of Thornhills and Hazeldeans—dreams in which Audley Egerton's gold and power—rooms in Downing Street, and saloons in Grosvenor Square—had passed away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median. Why visions so belying the gloomy and anxious thoughts that preceded them should visit the pillow of Randal Leslie, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... governors, Lord Dalhousie attempted to govern to the best of his ability, and what mistakes he committed arose from the contradictory and perplexing instructions he received from the officials in Downing Street, who were quite incapable at times of understanding the real condition of affairs ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... all this elephantine waggery the half-a-dozen chapters near the commencement, in which my collaborator sketched the first adventures of the Radical working man in Downing Street, were light and sparkling, and I feel sure the shilling skit he originally meditated would have been a great success. We christened the book The Premier and the Painter, ourselves J. Freeman Bell, had it type-written, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the Parliament House of Westminister, distinguished from St. James's, which denotes the Court, as Downing Street does the Government. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the Chief Secretary, being at stake - not to mention the far more important matter of personal and official dignity - Horsman flew off to London, boiling over with impatience and indignation. He rushed to 10 Downing Street. His Lordship was at the Foreign office, but was expected every minute; would Mr. Horsman wait? Mr. Horsman was shown into his Lordship's room. Piles of letters, opened and unopened, were lying upon the table. The Chief Secretary recognised his own signatures on the envelopes of a large bundle, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... by a summons addressed to "His Majesty's confidential servants" by the prime minister; and the ordinary place of meeting is either at the official residence of the first lord of the treasury in Downing Street or at the foreign office, but they may be held anywhere. No secretary or other officer is present at the deliberations of this council. No official record is kept of its proceedings, and it is even considered a breach ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the Menton post-office and grocer's shop. It was on the second day after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount, who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street. I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures. The glass made them seem curved, and it enhanced and altered their gestures and paces. I felt it became me to say "Peace" to them, and I went out, to the jangling of the door-bell. At the sight of me they stopped short, and Verrall ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... arguments for and against Colonial Federation have been so clearly set forth. As a rule, the colonists everywhere view with great aversion the idea of placing themselves under the direct authority of Downing Street, and no one will be surprised at this who recollects the treatment they have almost invariably received from that quarter. On the other hand, they are by no means impatient or eager to proclaim their independence. 'British they ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Within a few months, under his direction, English troops were in every part of the world, and English ships of war were sailing every ocean, to recover the slipping elements and to solidify the British Empire. Just as Pitt was taking up his residence at Downing Street, Robert Clive was winning the Battle of Plassey in India, which brought to England territory of untold wealth. Two years later James Wolfe, defeating the French commander, Montcalm, on the Plains of Abraham, added ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... her nature, just as a flower extracts every excellence from its surrounding soil, and, shining out for the sun, wastes no blossom underground. It had been her earliest ambition to marry a Member of Parliament and help him—by her prayers and counsel—on his conscientious career toward Downing Street. She had received an austere education, and even her native generosity of heart could not soften the indignation she had been trained to feel against any neglect of duty. Duty was a term which she applied to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... our King's law. People in our colonies, at least the officials, set wonderful store by the approbation of the Colonial Office at home. It does not matter what the colonial newspapers say, it is 'what will they say in Downing Street?' And if a despatch goes out approving of their conduct, neighbours may censure and sneer as they list. So we Christians have to report to Home, and have so to live 'that whether present or absent'—in a colony or in the mother country—'we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the junction of the Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of her colonies, with an arid soil, a ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... earlier in afternoon. Passed us in corridor as I was talking to the MARKISS, who was anxious to know how the dinner went off last night, at which nephew ARTHUR appeared in character of the New Host at Downing Street. The MARKISS looked narrowly at GRANDOLPH as he passed with head hung ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... spins round and round like a teetotum. I should think that such an instance has never been known since that good old parson who sung, 'Whatsoever king may reign, Still I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir.' Downing Street is the Grand Old Man's vicarage, and he endeavours to cling to it at all costs. In 1886 he said, 'I will not be a party to giving Ireland a legislative body to manage Irish concerns and at the same time have Irish members ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... member of society in that he condescended to write letters for Lord Persiflage. He was pleasant in his manners to all men, and had accommodated himself to Roden as well as though Roden's office had also been in Downing Street instead of ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the telephone with futile questions, and invented new ways of preventing something from being down somewhere. The war to them was a far-off thing essential to their way of life, as miners in the coal-fields are essential to statesmen in Downing Street, especially in cold weather. But it did not touch their souls or their bodies. They did not see its agony, or imagine it, or worry about it. They were always cheerful, breezy, bright with optimism. They made a little work go a long way. They were haughty and arrogant with ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the votes or the threats of any Irishman, and some method must be found, while safeguarding the Imperial link, to force Irishmen to meet each other and settle with each other: for the only result of ruling Tipperary from Downing Street is that Westminster is ruled from ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Jewish emancipation, without risking an imputation of Jacobinism. Moreover, the British Cabinet then in power was a Coalition Cabinet of pro-Catholics and anti-Catholics, and they could not well listen to any proposals that they should champion Jewish emancipation in Vienna, while in Downing Street the question of Roman Catholic emancipation ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... of Whigs, Radicals, Repealers, and men of every shade and gradation of opinion? Their situation, notwithstanding their victory, seems worse than that of their antagonists with reference to their power as a party; and if they do storm Downing Street and St. James's, and go again to the country, as far as appearances go, what chance have they of materially bettering their condition, and getting another House of Commons more manageable and better adapted to their purpose than this? This victory, therefore, will not enable the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Downing Street on our motor-scooter we were just in time to catch Sir PHILIP KERR by one of his coat-tails as he was disappearing into the door of No. 10 and to ask him whether the strange rumour as to the PRIME ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... have been laid between London and Paris, and it is now possible to pick up a telephone in Downing Street and speak directly to Mr. Lloyd George ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... certainly bore the neighbours. It is quite easy to picture the members of that circle in the year 1998, or 2024. "Listen to what Grandpapa's Diary says of the awful Zeppelin raids of February, 1917," or, "But Great-grandpapa, who had just finished his walk in the Park, and was passing Downing Street when the news came, etc." "Il est fatiguant," whispered Mr. St. John of General Webb at one of the dinners in "Henry Esmond," "avec sa trompette de Wynandael." That persistent blowing of the "trompette" of grandpapa would likewise be voted "fatiguant." ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... the opportunity on these occasions of entertaining my humble opinion that all this is complete "bosh;" and of asserting to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street, or Westminster Hall. Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of the Benevolent Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a toast for ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... But it is clear that though secluded from the turmoil in a country cottage, paralyzed, and his trunk already dead, Barbellion's sensitive mind and imaginative sympathy knew more of what was happening to his fellows in France, and what it meant for us all, than the combined Cabinet in Downing Street. That spark of dying light was aware when the luminaries on whom we depended were blind and ignorant. In his Last Diary, and within a day or two of his death, he wrote of the Peace Treaty (May, 1919): "After all the bright ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... admitted the Prime Minister, "we are hampered by these votes-for-women creatures; they disturb our meetings throughout the country, and they try to turn Downing Street into a sort of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... splash affair, and to set an example to the state in their own establishment of economy and reform in the public departments, hired Soyer, the best cook of the age, at a salary that would have pensioned half-a-dozen of the poor worn-out clerks in Downing Street. Vulgarity is always showy. It is a pretty word, "Reformers." The common herd of them I don't mind much, for rogues and fools always find employment for each other. But when I hear of a great reformer like some of the big bugs to England, that have been grinning through horse-collars of late years, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... but which, in his mouth, meant about as much as the oath by which the Knights of some modern orders bind themselves to redress the wrongs of all injured ladies. He had been fed in his boyhood with Whig speculations on government. He must often have seen, at Houghton or in Downing Street, men who had been Whigs when it was as dangerous to be a Whig as to be a highwayman, men who had voted for the Exclusion Bill, who had been concealed in garrets and cellars after the battle of Sedgemoor, and who had set their names to the declaration that they would live and die ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the labours of war-winning— Downing mandarins in Downing Street, Fixing brands of CAIN upon the sinning, Bingeing up the Army and the Fleet; Weary of dislodging Kings and Kaisers, Wearier of his friends than of his foes, Prompted by his medical advisers He has wandered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... ally, be it where it may, I unite with Russia for life and death." Bunsen advocated the participation of Prussia in the European concert with more earnestness than success. While the King was declaiming against the lawlessness which was supposed to have spread from the Tuileries to Downing Street, Bunsen, on his own authority, sent to Berlin a project for the annexation of Russian territory by Prussia as a reward for its alliance with the Western Courts. This document fell into the hands of the Russian party at Berlin, and it roused the King's own indignation. Bitter reproaches were launched ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe |
