W. H. D. Rouse
speaker
684 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 1 Aug
W. H. D. Rouse’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
after dinner they had a little music and he spent the evening making a catalogue of his books reducing the names of all my books to an alphabet which is probably the happiest task a man of pepys's temperament could enjoy
christmas eve sixteen sixty seven was evidently a cheerful evening mr pepys stopped in at the rose tavern for some burnt wine walked round the city in the moonlight and homeward early in the morning in such content that i dropped money in five or six places which i was the willinger to do it being christmas day and so home and there find my wife in bed and jane and the maid making pies
the evening of that christmas mrs pepys read aloud to him the history of the drummer of mr momson apparently a kind of contemporary phillips oppenheim a strange story of spies and worth reading indeed it was only in sixteen sixty that the christmas cheer was a little too much for our diarist
december twenty seventh sixteen sixty about the middle of the night i was very ill i think with eating and drinking too much and so i was forced to call the maid who pleased my wife and i in her running up and down so innocently in her smock
it is painful to this tracker of mr pepys's vestiges to note that on christmas day sixteen sixty two bishop morley at the chapel royal made but a poor sermon the bishop apparently rebuked the levity of the court
it was worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions of a bishop seriously that they all laugh in the chapel when he reflected on their ill actions and courses he did much press us to joy in these public days of joy and to hospitality but one that stood by whispered in my ear that the bishop do not spend one groat to the poor himself
in sixteen sixty five we fear that samuel indulged himself in church with some rather cynical thoughts saw a wedding in the church and the young couple so merry one with another and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition every man and woman gazing and smiling at them
one could continue for some space recounting the eupeptic peeps in his christmas merriments so large an edifice of pleasing conjecture can be built upon even his slightest notes one observes for instance that on december twenty seventh sixteen sixty four when my wife and all her folks came to make christmas gambols samuel left the party and went to bed
this was very different from his usual habit when there was fun going he was annoyed also that on this occasion his wife revelled all night not coming to bed until eight the next morning which vexed me a little but i believe there was no hurt in it at all but only mirth
so we take leave of the christmases of the pepys sixteen sixty eight is the last one recorded the time when elizabeth stayed at home all day altering her petticoat after supper the boy played some music on the lute and samuel's mine
was in mighty content let us think kindly of the good fellow and not forget that he coined one of the enduring phrases of english literature a phrase that is no such ineffective summary of all the lives of men and so to bed and of part two
part three of a christmas miscellany twenty twenty three by various authors what kind of a dog by christopher morley
what kind of a dog is he said the seacliff veterinary over the phone we must confess we were stumped all we could say was that he is oh well just a kind of a dog we didn't like to say that he is a synthetic hound and that his full name is haphazard gissing one
we didn't like to admit at any rate over the telephone that one of his grandmothers may have been a dachshund and that certainly one of his brothers-in-law is an airedale but at any rate it was fixed that we should take our excellent gissing over to the kennels to be boarded while we were in the city
gissing's behaviour was odd he seemed in some inscrutable way to suspect that something was going to happen the night before his departure he disappeared and was away all night saying good-bye to his cronies we suppose when we came home early in the afternoon to convoy him to seacliff he was nowhere to be found but about supper-time he turned up looking more haggard and disreputable than ever
there was a fresh scar on his face and he was very hungry he ate his supper hurriedly with no dignity at all as soon as he heard the rattle of his chain his spirits went very low but the admirable creature was docile dogs are profoundly religious at heart they put their trust in their deities unlike cats who are determined atheists and fight to the last against fate
dogs accept calmly what they see is ordered by the gods gissing hopped into dame quickly without protest and sat in silence during the ride his nose was unusually cold but then that may have been only the winter evening he had somewhat the bearing of one who is going to the dentist
dog fanciers are always baffled and set at naught when they see gissing but the sea cliff veterinarian made the most penetrating remark when we arrived he is accustomed indeed to dogs of high degree such dogs as are favored by the north shore of long island and gissing was rather a shock to him
after a long look what is his name he said gissing we replied with just a little of that embarrassment we always feel when such questions are asked for it is generally shown in the manner of the inquirer that gissing is an unusual name particularly for a dog who looks as though he ought to be called rover so we said perhaps a little defiantly gissing
but the doctor misunderstood it guessing he said dubiously and looked again at the abashed quadruped that's because he keeps you guessing what breed he is it amuses us the more to have gissing staying there associating with the lordly dogs of long islanders who are spending the snow season in florida because we feel that it is rather like sending a child to a fashionable boarding school
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