"Downing Street" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acting Legion and the Gadarene Swine, but that must have been because of something faulty in our make-up. The sound of this great anthem was sufficiently impressive to make one long to hear the real Coalition shouting it all along Downing Street. It is a solo with chorus, you understand, and the Coalition come in with a great roar of excitement and fervour on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... corners 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. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... style—swag over one shoulder and under the other arm—was tried, but it was found to be too hot for the Australian climate, and was discarded along with Wellington boots and leggings. Until recently, Australian city artists and editors—who knew as much about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in general—seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence; and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of civilization with an eye ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. 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 was actually pulled down and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with you in regretting that Lord FISHER was unable to accept Lord BERESFORD'S invitation to come and hear him speak in your House about the Downing Street sandwichmen and other collateral subjects arising out of the Air Service debate. You will be glad however to know that Lord FISHER'S absence was not due to indisposition, but to a previous engagement to take tea on the Terrace with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... Scotland Yard missed its smartest detective. What a fine voluptuary might Lord Rosebery have been! It is a platitude that the country is ruled best by the permanent officials, and I look forward to the time when Mr. Keir Hardie shall hang his cap in the hall of No. 10 Downing Street, and a Conservative working man shall lead Her Majesty's Opposition. In the lifetime of George, politics were not a whit finer than they are to-day. I feel a genuine indignation that he should have wasted so much of tissue in mean intrigues ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... haste on tea and toast, Then grapples with the early post, And reads the newspapers, which shed Denunciation on his head. Having digested their vagaries He calls his faithful secretaries And keeps them writing, sheet on sheet, Until he's due in Downing Street. The Cabinet is seldom through Until the clock is striking two, When Ministers, dispersing, munch Their frugal sandwiches for lunch. Then back into affairs of State Again they plunge from three till eight, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... perched there. Some one put them up; they did not fly so high. 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
... day in London, I posted my letter and received at once an invitation from Mr. Bryce to call upon him in Downing Street, where, as Under Secretary of State, he then ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the outbreak of a revolution, the overthrow of a throne—even for a few hours before it became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies to all style, and especially to all the evasive cajoleries of those dissolving views of events ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... correspondence which was subsequently published that Sanders had particularly warned Mr. Blowter against visiting the interior, that Sir Robert, that amiable man, had also expressed a warning, and that the august Government itself had sent a long and expensive telegram from Downing Street suggesting that a trip to the Ochori country was inadvisable in the present ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... Finally, the whole Irish vote, according to 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. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... also with Somerset House; and it is moreover tolerably well known that Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of Downing Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom House, Excise, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Lionesses of various breeds and sizes, who, if I remember aright, did not get quite as much opportunity for roaring as they would have liked; for, when Mr. Gladstone had started on a congenial theme, it was difficult to get in a word edgeways. One of these breakfast-parties at 10, Downing Street, stands out in memory more clearly than the rest, for it very nearly had a part in that "Making of History" which was then so much in vogue. The date was April 23, 1885. The party comprised Lady Ripon, Lord Granville, Dean Church, and Miss Mary Anderson, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... because I think we are going to change our Town-house. Downing Street most convenient, but question whether I shall be able to get a renewal of the lease next year. Sketched out the scenario of the Drury Lane Pantomime; but Sir AUGUSTUS prefers his own. Well, well, youth will have its way. Sent in my special article for Christmas and the New Year, "The History ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... 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 acquainted; and, as a natural consequence, their devotion and loyalty to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... clearly make out. But the dreadful fact remained that, let your patriotism be ever so firm, you had but to accept one of green-powder's little dinners and next morning you were as like as not to hurl a stone into 10, Downing Street. As for the end—! But no, I will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... joy it was, after a long solitary walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast, what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so cultivated! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... honourable gentleman who comes in, where is the distinctive principle? A shadowy difference may be simulated in opposition, to serve a cry and stimulate the hustings: but the mask is not even worn in Downing Street: and the conscientious conservative seeks in the pigeon-holes of a whig bureau for the measures against which for ten years he has been sanctioning by the speaking silence of an approving nod, a general wail of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... refused office, as high as I look for now, ten years ago. We believe in our opinions, and we hail the power that may carry them into effect. In this cabinet I shall have enemies. Oh, don't think we leave jealousy behind us, at the doors of Downing Street! I shall be one of a minority. I know well what must happen: like all men in power, I must strengthen myself by other heads and hands than my own. My daughter shall bring to me the alliance of that house ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... between Peterhouse and the river, the vigorous growth of the scientific side of the University is shown in the vast buildings newly erected on both sides of Downing Street, which has now become a street of laboratories and museums. Now that the outworks of the hoary citadel of Classicism have been stormed, and the undermining of the great walls has already begun, the development of modern science at Cambridge will be accelerated, and in the face of the urgency ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... 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, and sent it round to the publishers in two enormous quarto volumes. I ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the ministers not once, but so many times as to 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 ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of the thrill that was conveyed by this (it comes in three of my most recent books): "He looked, with a little catch in the throat, and read the number, 'Ten'—No. 10, Downing Street, where the finger of fate writes its decrees while a trembling continent waits, where empires are made and unmade—the hub of the universe...." Doesn't that make even your heart beat faster? But who will thrill at this: "He waited for a moment before the bijou semi-detached ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... have been interesting to have seen how such a Ratification as this, which is no Ratification but an insult, would have been accepted by Lord Beaconsfield. I think that within twenty-four hours of its arrival in Downing Street, the Boer Volksraad would have received a startling answer. But Lord Beaconsfield is dead, and by his successor it was received with all due thankfulness and humility. His words, however, on this subject still remain to us, and even ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... of October, 1801, preliminaries of peace between France and Great Britain were signed in Downing Street; on the 10th, General Lauriston, aide-de-camp to the First Consul, having arrived with the ratification of these preliminaries, the populace took the horses from his carriage and drew it to Downing Street. That night and the following there was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... strong a priori evidence in support of the statements that Mr. MASEFIELD is taking lessons in the Fox Trot at Boar's Hill, and that Lord Northsquith is bringing back with him from Morocco a powerful troupe of Dancing Dervishes, with the intention of installing them ultimately in Downing Street. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... prime minister—who has an indifferent official residence, which he and his family have occasionally occupied, in Downing street—lives in Carlton-House Terrace. It is a beautiful house, but not by any means well adapted for party-giving, for it is so constructed that circulation is almost impossible. If you once get into a room, you must stay there; whereas half the charm of Lady Palmerston's famous parties at Cambridge ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... overtake them, but with a dim feeling that it was expected of him, fell into the hands of the same community of brigands. Diplomacy, while anxious to do its best for a lady in misfortune, showed signs of becoming restive at this expansion of its task; as a frivolous young gentleman in Downing Street remarked, "Any husband of Mrs. Dobrinton's we shall be glad to extricate, but let us know how many there are of them." For a woman who valued respectability Vanessa really ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... county patronage. My demand of a commission in the Guards was no longer answered by the head of our house with astonishment at the loftiness of my expectations, and statements of the utter emptiness of the family exchequer. The result of his brief correspondence with Downing Street was a letter, notifying that his majesty was pleased to accept my services in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... possessed it, a man whose word is known to be unbreakable, whose 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 ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Downing Street apparently Mesopotamia is not regarded as a "blessed word," for when Colonel WEDGWOOD asked whether that country, after its future status had been decided, would be taken out of the hands of the Foreign Office Mr. CECIL HARMSWORTH fervently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... lubricate the wheels of agrarian settlement, was henceforth and by a "Home Rule Government" to be audaciously charged as a debt against Ireland. And this, be it noted, was part of the pact come to with the "Nationalist" leaders at the Downing Street breakfast-table, where Ireland's fate was sealed, and which they joyously supported in the House of Commons against such opposition as the All-for-Ireland minority was allowed to give it by the ruthless application ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... years older than you, Sir, I cannot say I have at all a perfect idea of him; nor did I ever hear the curious anecdote you tell me of the banker and my father. I was much better acquainted with Archbishop Blackburne. He lived within two doors of my father in Downing Street, and took much notice of me when I was near man.... He was a little hurt at not being raised to Canterbury on Wake's death [1737], and said to my father, "You did not think on me; but it is true, I am too old, I am too old." Perhaps, Sir, these are gossiping stories, but at least ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... 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 Fiske ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... House, the cheers raised by the faithful 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 occasion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... of royal petulance and old-time kingcraft, and similar ebullitions from Downing Street, exhorting the Upper Canadian Administration to hold tight the reins of government, the reforming spirit of the period had a hard time of it in entering on its many years conflict with an arrogant and bureaucratic Executive. Of many of the members of the ruling ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Huis ten-Bosch points to Wilhelmstrasse. Nothing can be done here. They suspect Downing Street.'—Ah, at The Hague, and at the ten-Bosch too, where the Czar and Andrew Carnegie held their first Peace Conference in ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the House of Commons is improving, and that many of the supporters of the Government who had at first thought of voting with Mr Cobden[9] are changing their minds. It has been suggested to Viscount Palmerston that it would be useful to have a meeting of the Party in Downing Street on Monday, and that many wavering members only want to have something said to them which they could quote as a reason for changing their intended course; and Viscount Palmerston has given directions for ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Fulcher in Downing Street to Mr. Fulcher in Arcadia. Mr. Fulcher," he said, "can no more return to Nature than he can enter a second time into his ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... a virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days—no quackery, no mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst quondam leaders of the Treasury Benech—now that the camp-followers have followed the leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... magnetic influence, Just go to her Majesty's Treasury, 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
... that periodical," said I. "The omniscience of the last copy I saw dismayed me. I couldn't understand why the Government were such insensate fools as not to move from Downing Street to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... to and fro all afternoon delivering messages, then dined and rode up by the young moon. I had plenty news when I got back; there is great talk in town of my deportation: it is thought they have written home to Downing Street requesting my removal, which leaves me not much alarmed; what I do rather expect is that H. J. Moors and I may be haled up before the C. J. to stand a trial for LESE-Majesty. Well, we'll try and ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... headlines announcing the "Arrival of the Rey in London," and in the extraordinarily unlikely event of the Queen of Sweden ever wishing to pay a visit to this country, any one with a Swedish dictionary could really compose a brilliant headline, "The Drottning drives despondently down Downing Street," and I confess that neither of them seem one whit more foolish than for English-speaking people to use the term Kaiser. The label may be a convenient one, but it is inaccurate, for there was not one ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... hoped, get the advantages of a public school without being exposed to some of its hardships and temptations. He would himself be able to live with his family, although, as things then were, he had to drive daily to and from the Slough station, besides having the double journey from Paddington to Downing Street. We accordingly moved to Windsor in Easter 1842. Fitzjames's last months at school had not been quite so triumphant as the first, partly, it seems, from a slight illness, and chiefly for the characteristic reason, according to his ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... there 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
... 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 surface of things, and the wrongs of Ireland did not appeal ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with which the Turkish Government, broadly speaking, have sold the ships to Germany. You see, according to the charter of the shipbuilding company, these vessels cannot be sold to any foreign government without the consent of Downing Street. That is the reason why the affair had to be conducted ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... — * At Downing Street Mr. Harcourt informed the Deputation that he had the "assurance of General Botha" that the Natives have too much land ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... a 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 ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... January, 1843, a public crime was committed which shocked the whole nation and aroused the utmost sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert. A half-crazy man named Macnaughten, who conceived he had received a political injury from Sir Robert Peel, planned to waylay and shoot the Premier in Downing Street. The man mistook his victim, and fatally wounded Sir Robert's private secretary, Mr. Drummond, who perished in the room of his chief. The plea of insanity accepted by the jury on the trial was so far set aside by ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... which are always in store for the nation that is content to follow the breed of cowards who usually direct her great affairs. The day will come when she will violently and suddenly lose her former fighting renown to such an unmistakable extent that the plucky fishwives will march upon Downing Street, and if they can catch its usual inmates, will rend them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us, followed by the invasion ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... young man, elegantly dressed, presented himself at Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Lucian Webber. He declined to send in a card, and desired to be announced simply as "Bashville." Lucian ordered him to be admitted at once, and, when he entered, nodded amiably to him and invited ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw |
