DELMENHORST, a town of Germany, grand duchy of Oldenburg, on the Delme, 8 m. by rail W. from Bremen, at the junction of a line to Vechta. Pop. (1905) 20,147. It has a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church, and is the seat of considerable industries; notably wool-combing, weaving, jute-spinning and the manufacture of linoleum. Delmenhorst was founded in 1230, and from 1247 to 1679, when it was destroyed by the French, was protected by a strong castle.
DELOLME, JEAN LOUIS (1740–1806), Swiss jurist and constitutional writer, was born at Geneva in 1740. He studied for the bar, and had begun to practise when he was obliged to emigrate on account of a pamphlet entitled Examen de trois parts de droit, which gave offence to the authorities of the town. He took refuge in England, where he lived for several years on the meagre and precarious income derived from occasional contributions to various journals. In 1775 he found himself compelled to accept aid from a charitable society to enable him to return home. He died at Sewen, a village in the canton of Schwyz, on the 16th of July 1806.
During his protracted exile in England Delolme made a careful study of the English constitution, the results of which he published in his Constitution de l’Angleterre (Amsterdam, 1771), of which an enlarged and improved edition in English appeared in 1772, and was several times reprinted. The work excited much interest as containing many acute observations on the causes of the excellence of the English constitution as compared with that of other countries. It is, however, wanting in breadth of view, being written before the period when constitutional questions were treated in a scientific manner. Along with a translation of Hume’s History of England it supplied the philosophes with most of their ideas about the English constitution. It thus was used somewhat as a political pamphlet. Several editions were published after the author’s death. Delolme also wrote in English Parallel between the English Government and the former Government of Sweden (1772); A History of the Flagellants (1782), based upon a work of Boileau’s; An Essay on the Union of Scotland with England (1787), and one or two smaller works.
DELONEY (or Delone), THOMAS, English ballad-writer and pamphleteer, produced his earliest indisputable work in 1586, and died about 1600. In 1596 Thomas Nashe, in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, wrote: “Thomas Deloney, the ballating silk-weaver, hath rime enough for all myracles, and wit to make a Garland of Good Will more than the premisses . . . and this deare yeare, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that, he being constrained to betake himself to carded ale; whence it proceedeth that since Candlemas, or his jigge, John for the king, not one merrie dittie will come from him, but, the Thunderbolt against Swearers,—Repent, England, Repent—and, the strange Judgements of God.” In 1588 the coming of the Armada
inspired him for three broadsides, which were reprinted (1860) by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. They are entitled “The Queenes visiting of the Campe at Tilsburie with her entertainment there,” “A Joyful new Ballad, declaring the happie obtaining of the great Galleazzo . . . ,” and “A new Ballet of the straunge and Most cruell Whippes which the Spaniards had prepared.” A
collection of Strange Histories (1607) consists of historical ballads by Deloney, with some poems from other hands. This collection, known in later and enlarged editions as The Royal Garland of Love and Delight and The Garland of Delight, contains the ballad of Fair Rosamond. J. H. Dixon in his preface to The Garland of Good Will (Percy Society, 1851) ascribes to Deloney The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green, and The Pleasant and sweet History of Patient Grissel, in prose, with the whole of the Garland of Good Will, including some poems such as “The Spanish Lady’s Love” generally supposed to be by other hands. His other works include The Gentle Craft (1597) in praise of shoemakers, The Pleasant Historie of John Winchecombe (8th ed., 1619), and Thomas of Reading or the Sixe Worthie Yeomen of the West (earliest extant edition, 1612). Kempe, the actor, jeers at these histories in his Nine Daies Wonder, but they were very popular, being reprinted as penny chap-books.
DE LONG, GEORGE WASHINGTON (1844–1881), American explorer, was born in New York city on the 22nd of August 1844. He graduated at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1865, and spent the next fourteen years in naval service in various parts of the world, attaining the rank of lieutenant in 1869, and lieutenant-commander in 1879. In 1873 he took part in the voyage of the “Juniata,” sent to search for and relieve the American Arctic expedition under Hall in the “Polaris,” commanding a steam launch which was sent out from Upernivik, Greenland, to make a thorough search of Melville Bay. On his return to New York the same year he proposed to James Gordon Bennett, of The New York Herald, that the latter should fit out a Polar expedition. It was not until 1879 that the final arrangements were made, the “Pandora,” a yacht which had already made two Arctic voyages under Sir Allen Young, being purchased and rechristened the “Jeannette” for this voyage. The story of this expedition (see Polar Regions) is chiefly remarkable on account of the long and helpless drifting of the “Jeannette” with the polar ice-pack in which she was caught (September 5, 1879) and by which she was finally crushed and sunk on the 13th of June 1881. The members of the expedition set out in three boats, one of which was lost in a gale, while another boat-load under De Long died from starvation after reaching the mouth of the Lena river. He was the last survivor of his party. His journal, in which he made regular entries up to the day on which he died (October 30, 1881) was edited by his wife and published in 1883 under the title Voyage of the “Jeannette”; and an account of the search which was made for him and his comrades by his heroic companion George W. Melville, who was chief engineer of the expedition and commanded the third of the retreating parties, was published a year later under the title of In the Lena Delta. The fate of the “Jeannette” was still more remarkable in its sequel. Three years after she had sunk several articles belonging to her crew were found on an ice-floe near Julianshaab on the south-west coast of Greenland; thus adding fresh evidence to the theory of a continuous ocean current passing across the unknown Polar regions, which was to be finally demonstrated by Nansen’s voyage in the “Fram.” By direction of the United States government, the remains of De Long and his companions were brought home and interred with honour in his native city.
DELORME, MARION (c. 1613–1650), French courtesan, was the daughter of Jean de Lou, sieur de l’Orme, president of the treasurers of France in Champagne, and of Marie Chastelain. She was born at her father’s château near Champaubert. Initiated into the philosophy of pleasure by the epicurean and atheist Jacques Vallée, sieur Desbarreaux, she soon left him for Cinq Mars, at that time at the height of his popularity, and succeeded, it is said, in marrying him in secret. From this time Marion Delorme’s salon became one of the most brilliant centres of elegant Parisian society. After the execution of Cinq Mars she is said to have numbered among her lovers Charles de St Evremond (1610–1703) the wit and littérateur, Buckingham (Villiers), the great Condé, and even Cardinal Richelieu. Under the Fronde her salon became a meeting place for the disaffected, and Mazarin is said to have sent to arrest her when she suddenly died. Her last years have been adorned with considerable legend (cf. Merecourt, Confessions de Marie Delorme, Paris, 1856). It seems established that she died in 1650. But she was believed to have lived until 1706 or even 1741, after having had the most fantastic adventures, including marriage with an English lord, and an old age spent in poverty in Paris. Her name has been popularized by various authors, especially by Alfred de Vigny in his novel Cinq Mars, by Victor Hugo in the drama Marion Delorme, and by G. Bottesini in an opera of the same title.
See P. J. Jacob, Marion Delorme et Ninon Lenclos (Paris, 1859); J. Peladan, Histoire et légende de Marion de Lorme (Paris, 1882).
DE L’ORME, PHILIBERT (c. 1510–1570), French architect, one of the great masters of the Renaissance, was born at Lyons, the son of Jehan de L’Orme, who practised the same art and brought his son up to it. At an early age Philibert was sent to Italy to study (1533–1536) and was employed there by Pope Paul III. Returning to France he was patronized by Cardinal du Bellay
