Word: lamb
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When naive Alexandrina Victoria became Queen of England in 1837, she inherited as Prime Minister a fine worldly Whig: William Lamb, Lord Melbourne. For four years, he, the representative of a passing era, patiently tutored the young Queen who was to play the title role in a new age. But the same man had had another life, as William Lamb, second son of worldlywise, domineering Lady Melbourne. As William Lamb, he was the husband of Byron's mistress, Caroline Lamb, and was by all odds the most urbane of the many cuckolds whom George Gordon Lord Byron left...
...that he was, William Lamb owed to his mother, Lady Melbourne. She presented her husband with six children, few of whom were his. William was universally supposed to be the son of Lord Egremont, who, scandal had it, bought Lady Melbourne from Lord Coleraine for ?13,000, of which Lady Melbourne got a cut. ("Your mother is a whore," a young Cambridge friend once shouted at William's brother George...
...William Lamb naturally fell easy victim to the wholly different boudoir atmosphere of Devonshire House, whose tyrant was slight, agile, wide-eyed, willful, 17-year-old Caroline Ponsonby. Her lisping voice cooed out words in "the Devonshire House drawl." Said a rival: "Lady Caroline baas like a little sheep." Caroline liked to gallop bareback, to dress in trousers. Sometimes she would scream and tear her clothes, kick the floor with her heels. But she was vivid, fitful, daring and held even outraged relatives spellbound...
...William Lamb was Caroline's predestined prey. They were married, though not before Caroline, "seized by an unaccountable fit of rage with the officiating bishop, tore her gown and was carried fainting from the room." For three years all went well. Once Caroline was brought in "concealed under a silver dish cover, from which she emerged on the dinner table stark naked. ..." In the mornings William and she read "Newton on the Prophecies with the Bible"; then "Hume with Shakespeare till the dressing bell...
...least of the unknowns are the imponderables of strategy and tactics. Wars are fought by human beings as well as by machines, and, as Napoleon suggested, an army of lions that is led by a lamb can be beaten by an army of lambs under the leadership of a lion. Failure of leadership lost the World War for Germany at the outset when a timid High Command failed to keep the strength of its right wing up to the plan of Alfred von Schlieffen on the famed swing through Belgium. Conversely, the Japanese capitalized on brilliant chance-taking when they...