60. Preparation For 1789.

It was agreed that my first mission as the world’s first Pastronaut would be to 1789, where I, Glen Mower, would encounter Horatio Nelson and dissuade him from entering the brewery bizz. Some bright spark from the future, had, it appeared, persuaded the naval hero to start producing a brew called Taff Lager, using water acquired from the Welsh river of that name.

I was briefed on my mission, which I considered a piece of cake. Appropriate, really as 1789 was the year of the storming of the Bastille in Paris that kicked off the French Revolution. One of the biggest gripes the rebels had against the aristocracy, and in particular, the monarchy, was something callous the wife of King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, said when a minister informed the Royal Majesties that the people were starving for want of bread.

‘Then let them eat cake,’ she retorted. It was the sort of comment that didn’t endear the French monarchy to the people. Although Mr Kipling was said to have appreciated it.

I had been told by others in the War Rooms that Professor Delphi was particularly fond of chucking out the advice ‘Know Thyself’. In fact, I was advised by senior bigwigs at the History Maintenance Commission that if I didn’t afford the command respect the Delphi would abort the mission with me still stuck in the present day. I did so, but in the back of my mind was aware that Pericles, the big noise in Ancient Athens, put ‘know thyself’ into practice in 431 BC when he got his fellow Athenians to park the bus behind the walls of their city and not to engage with the advancing Spartans. For he knew they were better fighters on land. Thus he knew the Athenians should only fight them at sea, where they were superior.

Thus he knew himself. Trouble was for Pericles he was a popular politician so he knew a lot of others too. It was from one of them that he caught the plague that killed him, not long after delivering the most memorable funeral speech in history dedicated to the fallen of Athens. Had he known he probably wouldn’t have been arsed to leave the cemetery. Thus, this ‘know thyself’ malarkey is complex and multilayered.

Back to the dossier on 1789. Here, to my mind, were the most interesting bits:

*In the UK, William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister. Good job he wasn’t in France. He would then have been called William Pitt the Hunger.

*George III was King. However, he was suffering from bouts of madness. William Pitt the Younger was in the process of pushing a bill through Parliament to enable George’s son to act as Regent. When George III heard about this, he considered changing his name to Bill as he quite fancied being pushed through Parliament too.

*The Industrial Revolution was underway in Britain as machinery was introduced in factories meaning the urban population was increasing at the expense of the rural as people flocked to cities enticed by work.

*William Addis was doing well with the toothbrush he had invented 9 years earlier in prison. To avoid his idea being ripped off by unscrupulous businessmen on the outside, he had to keep the idea to himself until he was released. This would explain why the parole board turned him down twice because he refused to smile at them. Trouble was, it took quite a while for the toothbrush to take off when he eventually got out because toothpaste hadn’t been invented. People used burnt bread, although there was plenty of burnt brick to be imported from France too due to the Storming of the Bastille.

*On the music scene Mozart was doing his thing though concentrating on opera. Johann Sebastian Bach’s son, Carl, died at the end of 1788. He had also been a composer. Unfortunately, his wife had been an existentialist and always blindfolded herself when in his presence as she didn’t believe in looking Bach.

*The big box office hit of 1789 was Elizabeth Inchbald’s The Married Man. It was said that she was working on a sequel called The Divorced Man, but worried that she would only get half the income from seats sold and also have to pay for the education of the kids. The greatest actors of the day were John Phillip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons. William Blake was the leading poet and as for prose Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would later die giving birth to Mary Shelley, wrote The Female Reader under the name Mr Creswick, as female authors were still frowned upon.

*February 1789 saw the death, aged 24, of the greatest racehorse of the 18th century: Eclipse. It is believed pretty well every racehorse in the world today is descended from this exceptional stallion who won every single race he entered. He was timed at 83 feet per second, although this might be when he took the wrong turning at the Beachy Head Stakes.

*Jack Broughton, a pioneer of bareknuckle prizefighting, died in January, 1789 aged 75. But it was a 24 year old pugilist called Daniel Mendoza who revolutionised the prize ring by introducing science to the fight game. He brought in defensive techniques such as side-stepping and backward steps. He beat his great rival Richard Humphries twice during this period and opened up his own boxing academy. He also published The Art of Boxing, the first tome dedicated to using science to overcome an opponent. Although the advice on page 86 to use a bunsen burner to burn the arse of one’s adversary as they sat down between rounds was considered a bit too excessive.