From hero to figure of hate
QUESTION Who was the sculptor of the Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee that has caused such controversy?
THE statue, and the park where it stood, were donated to the city by Paul Goodloe McIntire ( 1860- 1952), a Charlottesville native.
In 1880, McIntire had left the University of Virginia after one semester and went to Chicago where he worked as a coffee salesman and then a stockbroker.
He moved to New York City, bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1901, and amassed a fortune.
During the Twenties, he used his wealth to beautify his native city with parks and fine sculpture. They included the library and five parks: Lee (renamed Emancipation Park), Jackson ( Justice Park), Belmont, Washington and McIntire.
He donated statues of Lee and Jackson and dedicated Lee Park to the memory of his parents.
He also gave the statue of explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Sacagawea, which is at the intersection of Ridge and McIntire Roads in the city. Another statue of George Rogers Clark, at the intersection of Jefferson Park Avenue and West Main Street, was gifted to the University of Virginia.
McIntire commissioned the Lee monument in 1917. The statue was sculpted by Henry Shrady (1871-1922), who died before it was finished. Leo Lentelli completed the work.
The unveiling of the Lee statue drew 30,000 people, including military cadets, church leaders and hundreds of Confederate veterans. May Walker Lee, the threeyear-old great-granddaughter of General Lee, helped unveil the statue. Master of ceremonies Judge Richard Thomas Walker Duke called Lee the ‘greatest man who ever lived’.
The Robert E. Lee statue was commissioned in the latter days of a time known as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, a reimagining of the Confederate cause as an honourable struggle for the Southern way of life, while minimising or denying the central role of slavery.
Its creation has been linked with the founding of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in Charlottesville. However, this emerged in 1921, four years after the statue was commissioned. While it was a time of racial segregation — the deed for McIntire Park described it as ‘a public park and playground for the white people of the City of Charlottesville’ — McIntire was not a white supremacist.
He donated land for a black-only park named after African-American educator Booker T. Washington.
However, he was a lover of Southern history and of horses, hence Lee is depicted on his mount Traveller and Jackson on his horse Little Sorrel.
Andrew Gillingham, Leicester.
QUESTION What is the origin of the word humdinger?
THIS is thought to be a contraction of two separate words with similar meanings — hummer and ‘dinger’.
The word hummer is first recorded in Thomas Otway’s Restoration comedy The Soldier’s Fortune (1681). A character has this to say of a vivacious woman: ‘She’s a hummer; such a bona roba, ah.’ Bona roba comes from the Italian buonaroba meaning ‘ good dress’ or ‘ good stuff,’ a euphemism for a prostitute.
By the 19th century, the hummer label was often applied to a fast horse, ship or train — something that ‘hums’ along.
Dinger, meanwhile, developed similar meanings based on an old meaning of ding, ‘to deal heavy blows’, which dates from as early as 1300. The two were first linked in America in the late 19th century. In 1883, the Daily Enterprise of Livingston, Montana, has: ‘The show will be a humdinger.’
The RAF adopted the word in World War II to refer to a fast aircraft.
Mike Barnes, Poole, Dorset.
QUESTION In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I had a moped/scooter. It was 50cc with pedals to assist the engine, a belt on a V-shaped drive, but no gears. Has anyone seen or heard of something similar?
THIS was almost certainly a French Motobecane Mobylette 50V, which had what was known as a variator transmission. This had a large, clearly visible V-belt pulley behind the engine. A small sprocket wheel behind the pulley drove the rear wheel via a chain.
The pulley had pedals attached via a free-wheel mechanism so they could be used to start the engine or assist it on hills. The pulley was driven by a V-belt from a much smaller pulley on the engine.
The engine and exhaust system was pivoted on the frame of the moped so it could move backwards and forwards relative to the rear pulley. This was to allow for the variation in spacing needed between the front and rear pulleys as the space between the cones varied.
The great advantage of this transmission is that it is automatic, regulated by the speed of the engine, and continuously variable. However, while OK on a 50cc engine, having the engine and exhaust system move as you change transmission ratios can be a bit of a problem if you want something larger.
This was solved in 1958. The Dutch car company Daf produced the Daf 600, a small car with Variomatic transmission. This was invented by Hubert van Doorne. Now the rear pulley was also made from two shallow cones with a spring pushing them together.
My wife had an 80cc Suzuki scooter with this transmission in the Eighties and it worked very well; much better than the 150cc motor bike with a threespeed gear box I rode in the late Fifties.
Denis Sharp, Hailsham, E, Sussex.