Sir William Schwenck Gilbert

This portraitback to top

This photograph was taken during his year of estrangement from Sullivan following the so-called 'carpet quarrel' of 1890, when Gilbert took D'Oyly Carte to court for financial mismanagement and Sullivan sided with Carte. Gilbert was quick to anger. When knighted in 1907, he was furious about being described as a playwright instead of a dramatist. He spent his retirement in his country estate, Grim's Dyke. He drowned aged seventy-four having dived into his lake to assist a distressed swimmer. His memorial on the Victoria Embankment contains the epitaph: 'His foe was folly and his weapon wit.'

Events of 1891back to top

Current affairs

The Irish Nationalist leader Charles Parnell is forced to resign after being named in the divorce proceedings brought by William O'Shea against his wife Kitty, who had been Parnell's mistress for a decade. The scandal severely damages the campaign for the Home Rule Bill, contributing greatly to its subsequent failure. Parnell's health also suffered; he contracted rheumatic fever and died a few months after resigning.

Art and science

Thomas Hardy's publishes Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a tragedy which explores the consequences of the young Tess's seduction by the wealthy Alec D'Urberville. In the novel, Hardy sets forward his major concerns about the individual's powerlessness before fate, whilst radically critiquing the hypocritical double standards of contemporary morals.

International

The construction of Trans-Siberian railway, the longest single rail system in Russia, begins in the Urals and at Vladivostock. Running between Moscow and Vladivostock, work was completed in 1917.
The German aviation pioneer Otto Lilenthal takes off in the first glider from a hill near Potsdam, the first of many guided flights and an important step in the development of aerial technology.

Comments back to top