Karl Rove faces a mob
I'm sure it was upsetting to Karl Rove, but the incident where a crowd "swarmed" his house surely has its amusing side.
(For the most part the crowd was peaceful, but there was a time when "the crowd ... grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read 'Say Yes to DREAM' and pounding on the glass. At one point, Rove rushed to a window, pointed a finger and yelled something inaudible.")
When Rove finally proposed that he meet with only two leaders, and the others all get back on the buses and disperse, they agreed. Then he yelled at the two spokespeople: "Palacios said that Rove was 'very upset' and was 'yelling in our faces' and that Rove told them 'he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry.'
"A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor."
For some reason this takes me back to a biography of the Duke of Wellington I read recently. The Duke returned to England after his heroics in the Napoleonic wars, and lived for another thirty years. The public's view of him went up and down, ranging from seeing him almost literally as a god, to shouting at him and swarming him, and even breaking windows on his house.
1820: someone plans to stab the Duke as he walks home, but loses courage at the last moment. When a plot against the Cabinet became known, the Duke proposed that Ministers dine at their usual place, but with pistols. Most of them ate elsewhere instead, but Castlereagh fell into the habit of carrying "pocket pistols at the dinner-table." A group of roadmenders with pickaxes stopped the Duke's horse, and demanded that he say "God save the Queen." He did so, with a flourish.
1831: "Parliament had been dissolved, and London illuminated for Reform [extending the franchise or vote to more people]. A cheerful mob paraded Piccadilly on the look-out for recalcitrant householders. Dark windows meant a Tory occupant; ... the Duke was the last man in London who was likely to put candles in his windows for Reform in order to oblige a mob; and presently the stones began to crash into the silent rooms...until a servant on the roof let off a blunderbuss...."
1832: the Duke rides from home, and a crowd gathers to confront him on his return. A magistrate offers to help, and the Duke says he simply needs to be clear on the route to follow, so he doesn't have to turn back on the mob. "They tried to drag him from his horse in Fenchurch Street; but two Chelsea pensioners appeared....There was some stone-throwing in Holborn....an obliging gentleman...drove a tilbury behind him for some time [and] gave valuable cover....Two policemen joined the little party...." The Duke made it home safely, being observed by many walking the horse slowly, staring between the horse's ears. This episode was on June 18--anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
Of course, in happier times the Duke was often cheered in the street. One can imagine what he would have thought of the idea of having hired security with him at all times. When he died in 1852 the Duke was granted a state funeral, and had a huge funeral procession--perhaps the biggest in Victorian London?
Update: Good old Roy Jenkins:
"His state funeral, in St. Paul's Cathedral (although somewhat chaotically organized), was on a scale never previously seen for someone not a sovereign and only twice subsequently rivaled by other 'nonroyals' -- Gladstone in 1898 and Churchill in 1965."
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