Tuesday 1 May 2007

Arthur, Odo and tutors visit the Industrious Fleas

From: Lord William Russell and his wife, 1815-1846
by Georgiana Blakiston
Publisher: London, J. Murray, 1972.
ISBN: 0719522420 9780719522420

Oakley, Dec 3rd, 1839

"During their first weeks in London Arthur and Odo with the two tutors pursued a course of sightseeing that took them from the Tower of London to the British Museum and the Polytechnic Institute, and included a visit to the Industrious Fleas, while their evenings were often spent at the play when the ducal boxes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden were available."

Arthur and Odo were Natural History enthusiasts and the diary goes on to tell how they had a large amount of pets, visited the snake shops in Cannon Street and a taxidermists in Bank.

These two went on to become an MP, Lord Arthur John Edward Russell and the first British ambassador to the German Empire, Odo William Leopold Russell, 1st Baron Ampthill.

There is also tenuous Bertolotto connection because Lord Russell died on 16 July 1846 at age 56 in Genoa, Italy which was where Bertolotto was born.

http://www.thepeerage.com/p2760.htm#i27600

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