LENO, DAN, the stage-name of George Galvin (1861-1904), English comedian, who was born at Somers Town, London, in February 1861. His parents were actors, known as Mr and Mrs Johnny Wilde. Dan Leno was trained to be an acrobat, but soon became a dancer, travelling with his brother as “the brothers Leno,” and winning the world’s championship in clog-dancing at Leeds in 1880. Shortly afterwards he appeared in London at the Oxford, and in 1886-1887 at the Surrey Theatre. In 1888-1889 he was engaged by Sir Augustus Harris to play the Baroness in the Babes in the Wood, and from that time he was a principal figure in the Drury Lane pantomimes. He was the wittiest and most popular comedian of his day, and delighted London music-hall audiences by his shop-walker, stores-proprietor, waiter, doctor, beef-eater, bathing attendant, “Mrs Kelly,” and other impersonations. In 1900 he engaged to give his entire services to the Pavilion Music Hall, where he received £100 per week. In November 1901 he was summoned to Sandringham to do a “turn” before the king, and was proud from that time to call himself the “king’s jester.” Dan Leno’s generosity endeared him to his profession, and he was the object of much sympathy during the brain failure which recurred during the last eighteen months of his life. He died on the 31st of October 1904.
LENORMANT, FRANÇOIS (1837-1883), French Assyriologist and archaeologist, was born in Paris on the 17th of January 1837. His father, Charles Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and Egyptologist, was anxious that his son should follow in his steps. He made him begin Greek at the age of six, and the child responded so well to this precocious scheme of instruction, that when he was only fourteen an essay of his, on the Greek tablets found at Memphis, appeared in the Revue archéologique. In 1856 he won the numismatic prize of the Académie des Inscriptions with an essay entitled Classification des monnaies des Lagides. In 1862 he became sub-librarian of the Institute. In 1859 he accompanied his father on a journey of exploration to Greece, during which Charles Lenormant succumbed to fever at Athens (24th November). Lenormant returned to Greece three times during the next six years, and gave up all the time he could spare from his official work to archaeological research. These peaceful labours were rudely interrupted by the war of 1870, when Lenormant served with the army and was wounded in the siege of Paris. In 1874 he was appointed professor of archaeology at the National Library, and in the following year he collaborated with Baron de Witte in founding the Gazette archéologique. As early as 1867 he had turned his attention to Assyrian studies; he was among the first to recognize in the cuneiform inscriptions the existence of a non-Semitic language, now known as Accadian. Lenormant’s knowledge was of encyclopaedic extent, ranging over an immense number of subjects, and at the same time thorough, though somewhat lacking perhaps in the strict accuracy of the modern school. Most of his varied studies were directed towards tracing the origins of the two great civilizations of the ancient world, which were to be sought in Mesopotamia and on the shores of the Mediterranean. He had a perfect passion for exploration. Besides his early expeditions to Greece, he visited the south of Italy three times with this object, and it was while exploring in Calabria that he met with an accident which ended fatally in Paris on the 9th of December 1883, after a long illness. The amount and variety of Lenormant’s work is truly amazing when it is remembered that he died at the early age of forty-six. Probably the best known of his books are Les Origines de l’histoire d’après la Bible, and his ancient history of the East and account of Chaldean magic. For breadth of view, combined with extraordinary subtlety of intuition, he was probably unrivalled.
LENOX, a township of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1900) 2942, (1905) 3058; (1910) 3060. Area, 19.2 sq. m. The principal village, also named Lenox (or Lenox-on-the-Heights), lies about 2 m. W. of the Housatonic river, at an altitude of about 1000 ft., and about it are high hills—Yokun Seat (2080 ft.), South Mountain (1200 ft.), Bald Head (1583 ft.), and Rattlesnake Hill (1540 ft.). New Lenox and Lenoxdale are other villages in the township. Lenox is a fashionable summer and autumn resort, much frequented by wealthy people from Washington, Newport and New York. There are innumerable lovely walks and drives in the surrounding region, which contains some of the most beautiful country of the Berkshires—hills, lakes, charming intervales and woods. As early as 1835 Lenox began to attract summer residents. In the next decade began the creation of large estates, although the great holdings of the present day, and the villas scattered over the hills, are comparatively recent features. The height of the season is in the autumn, when there are horse-shows, golf, tennis, hunts and other outdoor amusements. The Lenox library (1855) contained about 20,000 volumes in 1908. Lenox was settled about 1750, was included in Richmond township in 1765, and became an independent township in 1767. The names were those of Sir Charles Lennox, third duke of Richmond and of Lennox (1735-1806), one of the staunch friends of the American colonies during the War of Independence. Lenox was the county-seat from 1787 to 1868. It has literary associations with Catherine M. Sedgwick (1789-1867), who passed here the second half of her life; with Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose brief residence here (1850-1851) was marked by the production of the House of the Seven Gables and the Wonder Book; with Fanny Kemble, a summer resident from 1836-1853; and with Henry Ward Beecher (see his Star Papers). Elizabeth (Mrs Charles) Sedgwick, the sister-in-law of Catherine Sedgwick, maintained here from 1828 to 1864 a school for girls, in which Harriet Hosmer, the sculptor, and Maria S. Cummins (1827-1866), the novelist, were educated; and in Lenox academy (1803), a famous classical school (now a public high school) were educated W. L. Yancey, A. H. Stephens, Mark Hopkins and David Davis (1815-1886), a circuit judge of Illinois from 1848 to 1862, a justice (1862-1877) of the United States Supreme Court, a Republican member of the United States Senate from Illinois in 1877-1883, and president of the Senate from the 31st of October 1881, when he succeeded Chester A. Arthur, until the 3rd of March 1883. There is a statue commemorating General John Paterson (1744-1808) a soldier from Lenox in the War of Independence.
See R. de W. Mallary, Lenox and the Berkshire Highlands (1902); J. C. Adams, Nature Studies in Berkshire; C. F. Warner, Picturesque Berkshire (1890); and Katherine M. Abbott, Old Paths and Legends of the New England Border (1907).
LENS, a town of Northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, 13 m. N.N.E. of Arras by rail on the Déûle and on the Lens canal. Pop. (1906) 27,692. Lens has important iron and steel foundries, and engineering works and manufactories of steel cables, and occupies a central position in the coalfields of the department. Two and a half miles W.S.W. lies Liévin (pop. 22,070), likewise a centre of the coalfield. In 1648 the neighbourhood of Lens was the scene of a celebrated victory gained by Louis II. of Bourbon, prince of Condé, over the Spaniards.