Social Victorians/Timeline/1884

1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s Headlines 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890s Headlines 1910s 1920s-30s

January 1884

5 January 1884, Saturday

Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida opens at the Savoy.

March 1884

<quote>It would be eight years before the Prince [of Wales] spoke to the Churchills again. Then, in March 1884, pressed by the Queen and well aware of Lord Randolph's rising reputation in the House of Commons, His royal Highness consented to attend a dinner given by the Attorney General where the guests included a Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone and Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill. The meeting passed off well, but another two years elapsed and Lord Randolph had become Secretary for India before the Prince could bring himself to enter the Churchill home</quote>(Leslie 66).

28 March 1884, Friday

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, died, his wife Helen pregnant with their second child. He was 30.

April 1884

7 April 1884, Monday

Helena Blavatsky comes to London from Paris, "arriving unexpectedly on the evening of a meeting of the 'London Lodge,'" and then returns a week later (Sinnett, A. P., Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. P. 110 of this pdf; p. 214 in the edition they digitized: http://www.theosophical.ca/books/IncidentsInTheLifeOfMadameBlavatsky_APSinnett.pdf).

9 April 1884, Wednesday, through 20 April, Sunday

Henry Steel Olcott and perhaps Blavatsky attended "Almost nightly meetings aid receptions at the Sinnetts. [Olcott] Meets Edwin Arnold, F. W. H. Myers, William Stead, Camille Flammarion, Oscar Wilde, Prof. Adams, discoverer of Neptune, the Varleys, the Crookes, Robert Browning, Sir Oliver Lodge, Matthew Arnold, Lord and Lady Borthwick, C. C. Massey, Stainton Moses ('M. A. Oxon.') (Diaries)." (Chronological Survey: xxviii–xxix)

13 April 1884, Sunday

Easter Sunday

14 April 1884, Monday

Helena Blavatsky returns to Paris from London, having been there a week.

May 1884

16 May 1884, Friday

Meeting of the Fabian Society, the first meeting George Bernard Shaw attended (Holroyd, vol. 1, p. 131).

28 May 1884, Wednesday

Derby Day.

According to the Morning Post, <quote>Mrs. Warner Hyde's first reception at 24, Grosvenor-place. / Mrs. W. H. Smith's evening party, 3, Grosvenor-place. / Chevalier and Mrs. Desanges' at home, at 16, Stratford-place, four till seven. No cards. / The New Club Dance. / ... Royal College of Music, annual meeting, Albert Hall, 4. / ... Royal Society of Literature, meeting, 8.</quote> ("Arrangements for This Day." The Morning Post Wednesday, 28 May 1884: p. 5 [of 8], Col. 7A).

June 1884

1 June 1884, Sunday

Whit Sunday

18 June 1884, Wednesday

A "thought-reading" experiment, based on a challenge by Henry Labourchere, was performed with some

Mr. Irving Bishop last evening gave a "Thought-Reading" séance in the drawing-room of the Westminster Palace Hotel, in the presence of a large and fashionable audience, which included some twenty or thirty members of both Houses of Parliament. The Committee selected to watch the experiments, with Mr. Edward Stanhope, M.P., in the chair, were: — Mr. Algernon Bourke, Canon Wilberforce, Mr. Henry Hermann, Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P., Dr. Cameron, M.P., Mr. Clement Scott, Lord Mount-Temple, Mr. M'Lagan, M.P., Mr. Millais, R.A., Lord Mayo, and Mr. Cross. Before commencing the task of trying to read the number of a bank note sealed in an envelope, in accordance with the conditions of Mr. Labouchere's challange of a year ago, Mr. Bishop succeeded in finding a, pin hidden by Mr. M'Lagan, M.P, but failed in attempts to discover one concealed by Mr. Millais, or to locate a supposed pain in the body of Mr. Healy, M.P. Mr. Bishop's first attempt with a bank-note, with Sir Henry Holland, M.P., as the subject, was wrong, and then Mr. Bishop claimed that he ought to be allowed to select his subject from one of the fifty gentlemen whose names were chosen by Mr. Labouchere. After much discussion, this was agreed to, and the experimenter selected Mr. M'Lagan and Mr. Stanhope as his subjects, they being furnished with a fresh bank-note by Sir H. Holland. On their return to the room, Mr. Bishop put the figures 33425 on the board, but they were declared by Sir H. Holland, who held the note, to be wrong. Mr. Bishop then tried with Mr. Stanhope, when he made it out to be 33,245, which was announced to be correct. The cheers greeting the announcement were renewed as Mr. M'Lagan stated that he had made a mistake in the number, and was really thinking of 33,425. Mr. Bishop said he thought Mr. Laboucheie owed him an apology for what he had written about him, and also 1000/. to the Children's Hospital.— On the motion of Mr. Stanhope, seconded by Mr. M'Lagan, a vote of thanks was accorded the performer!

29 June 1884, Sunday

Helena Blavatsky returned to London: "She came over to London again on the 29th of June, and stayed with friends [the Arundales, I think] in Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill, where she remained till early in August, going over then to Germany with a party of Theosophists on a visit to friends in Elberfeld. Her presence in London during the period referred to became rather widely known, and large numbers of people contrived to make her acquaintance. Streams of visitors were constantly pouring in to see her, and with her usual abandon of manner she would receive her callers in any costume, in any room which happened to be convenient to her for the moment — in her bedroom, which she also made her writing-room and study, or in her friends' drawing-room thick with the smoke of her innumerable cigarettes, and of those which she hospitably offered to all who cared to accept them." (Sinnett, A. P., Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. P. 111 of this pdf; p. 215 in the edition they digitized: http://www.theosophical.ca/books/IncidentsInTheLifeOfMadameBlavatsky_APSinnett.pdf)

July 1884

3 July 1884, Thursday

Bret Harte met Oscar Wilde <quote>for the first time at an "at home" at the Lawrence Barretts</quote> (Axel Nissen, Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 216)

August 1884

"Early in August," Helena Blavatsky left London (Sinnett, A. P., Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky. P. 111 of this pdf; p. 215 in the edition they digitized: http://www.theosophical.ca/books/IncidentsInTheLifeOfMadameBlavatsky_APSinnett.pdf).

25 August 1884, Monday

Summer Bank Holiday

October 1884

31 October 1884, Friday

Halloween

November 1884

5 November 1884, Wednesday

Guy Fawkes Day

December 1884

25 December 1884, Thursday

Christmas Day

26 December 1884, Friday

Boxing Day

Works Cited

• Chronological Survey of the Chief Events in the Life of H. P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott, December, 1883, to December, 1885 Inclusive. (http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/misc/cs_06.htm)