LONDON GOSSIP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 30, 3 February 1894, Page 4 (Supplement)

LONDON GOSSIP.

(fBOIX OtTK SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)

London, December 15.

The Paeis Outrage. Is is an agreeablo reflection thab any madman or fanatic sufficiently anxioua for revenge or notoriety to be rogardless of

consequences can, by purchasing a sauce. ; pan, a pound of nails and four penn'orth (of chemicals, any day and anywhere treat -■ us to jusb such a murderous outrage as tho one somewhat unsuccessfully carried out in Paris last Saturday. The police, indeed, are distinctly of opinion that before many weeks have passed a wholesale holocaust of the same sort will be attempted in London. They pub down both this explosion and the one at Barcelouft to the written and spoken iucitements to murder of leading Anarchists, and they urge there will be no safety for the civilised world whilst such mischievous license continues. In this cry even the Radical press now joins. The • Daily News' says:—' The nice distinction between deeds and words, or at any rate, between some deeds and some words, is breaking down under the weight of those abominable crimes. If it is wrong to murder innocent crowds wholesale, ib cannot be righb to extol tho deed in the name of "social regeneration." The propaganda of these horrors must be checked. The laws of every civilised Stato would make shorb work of a journal devoted to the professional interests of the burglar and the footpad. A society of philosophic Thugs would hardly be tolerated in our midst. It seems absurd to tolerate bhe filthy sheebs thab are the organs of infinitely more dangerous criminals than either. Anarchy as a political creed, ab any rate as a political organisation, has now reached bhe antiBocial stage, and mere adherence to ib should entail the penalties provided, or to be provided, by law. Other forms of murderous conspiracy aro nob allowed to take bhe name of theory in vain. If wo continue the privilege to bhis one, ib will be impossible to deny ib to the rest. There will com 9 a time when the advocacy of child murder will be simply a view on bhe question of population, and when every wretch who is caught plotting arson will claim that ho is only trying an experiment in fuel for the roasting of pigs. Anarchism is no longer an opinion ; ib is eimply an incitement to crime.' One of the worst effects of these abominable crimes is the discredit they bring on innocent people. Neither Socialists nor Radicals have the faintest sympathy with the Anarchists. Yet, as a red-hot Tory had tho impudence to say to rqe on Sunday, /^Both will get blamosd.' ' I reckon.'wenb on thi& abandoned pers^OD, ' that the Paris blow-x^P W*M w*n us k°*n and Accring^oll- A strong- point of our free and indopt>ndenb electors isfchatfew of them are good **> distinction. An Anarchist and » socialist means much the same thing to th em. Both are noisy persons who " gas' in the Park on Suadays about "bu 3tmg up everything, and require to be kep b in order The bomfr-thrower Vaillan t proves to be a man of the worst possible uharacter, who was known bo- be an Anarchist of the most dangerous class, and was supposed to be under close police surveillance Thab such a diabolical wretch should* under any pretence have been to get Jntoths Legislative Chamber evidences that the * ranch method of dealing with known criminals is by no moans so perfect as the world supposed. Ib would, one may venture to assert, bo impossible for a rogue of Vallianb's calibre tor effect an entry to the Strangers' Gallery at Westminster. Vaillaab belongs to the wolf cenua of convicb. .A man named Marchand whose wife,* marriage certificate, name and furniture the bomb-thrower calmly annexed some time ago, says Vaillant is the blackest scoundrel and the bravest fellow he everknew. He wasoftenreduced to famine and yet he was koen on money-making. Marchand, directly he heard of the explosion divined the aufclior, and said and still says it must have b-wn done for money. If there had been no money hanging to it Vailianb would not have run the rick, bub for money he would do anything. Where he blundered was in nob having Btudied the interior of the Palais Bourbon. He also blundered when wounded in not crying out for help. Instead he farst tried to geb oub and then hid himself. Shortly after the explosion, aa Dr. Bourgade was crossing one of the Icbbies, he oaw a man leaning against a door with blood streaming from his face. When, however, the doctor bade him go into the hall to have his wounds dressed, he said, • Thanks, but it is a mero scratch. I m off home now to get it seen to.' ' You won'b be able bo leave here for ab least two hours, said the doctor, " all the doors are closed, and none can pass oub bill bhe police have examined them.' 'In that case,' said the man calmly, ' I will avail myeelf of your kindness.' This was Vaillant. The police recognisad Vaillant as their man the insbanb bhey ' placed' him* and he, seeing the gamo was up, cub ehorb the inquisitor conbemptuously :—' Yes, I am an Anarchist, and proud of it. You are quite righb; I did the deed. 1 wanted to make a fricassee of those sacres demtties.' • What have the deputies done to you ? 'To me—personally—nothing ; bub they are the sorb of canaille whom one should get'rid of.' On Monday morning the Minister of Justice visited Vallianf, (Can you imagine our Home Secretary or Attorney General calling on a freshly caged dynamitor ?) ab the Hotel Dien, and asked : ' Why did you commit bhis crime ? 1 It is useless bo try and explain bo you,' replied the criminal shortly. ' You are a bourgeois, and couldn't understand.' The Minister thereupon ignominously retreated. A few leading pressmen were also privileged to enjoy a stare at the notoriety of the hour. Mrs Crawford of bhe • Daily News' says :—'l saw him under guard, bo the prison of La Satit6. At the hospital he w*s sitting up in a room ab the end of the St. Landry ward. One of ma hands was in a sling. His nose was much swollen and bound with sticking plaster. It was hard bo judge of his physiognomy, bub ho was astonishingly well dressed for a man who earned only very Blender and precarious wages, and, in apito of his disfigurement, impressed me as intelligent. He has very strange eyes. They have a variety of expressions, which show discrepancies and contrasts in the character. Their first look is hard, sharp, suspicious, and reading. When he has taken stock of the person he has seen for the first time.thoy assumea wholly different look. He has at times the gaze of a visionary, and again looks as cunning as a weak and wild animal in the habib of being pursued or j hungering for prey. Ho has a str.ong neck, ami a Qne chest, and broad shoulders. Two policemen walked up ar.d down the room where he was under treatment. He had b6en visited by a Juge destruction, who gave orders th»b nobody was to be allowed to speak to him except strictly on hospital businosi. His wife has nob yeb asked bo see Mm. She is bolieved nob bo have known of his plan for drawing abtention to himself by bomb throwing.' Tho same correspondent soya :—« All the time that ho wbb ur.der surveillance for his lust penal offence life was organising revolutionary meetings and lectures, and had set up an Anarchisb society ab Choiay-le-Boi, under the name of the Society of Philosophical Studies. The Mayor was asked by him to lond bhe council-rooca ab the Mayoralby, bat refused, bocauso there was a rule to allow none bub regularly authorised societies to use it. He, however, lent turn aa outbuilding. The lectures were tor

rustics of tho suburbs of Paris. Doubtless Vaillanb wanted to become an elecboral agent, and in this way to riae in the world. He was very clever in gaining influence, and in the summer season making money as a pedlar in connection with his lectures. He organised a band of plausible talkers to give village lectures on all kinds of subjects aboub which rustics mighb like to be well informed. One of the band, as a herald, preceded the others on a cycle which he had stolen. When things were made ready for them Vaillanb and his lecturers arrived. If he was to talk of fermentation, he had a microscope with vaccines or anti-microbe powders to sell. He cleared one day with his band £20, in a turn round villages south of Paris. The lectures were on the microbes of the mouth and nostril*, which were shown on the field of the microscope, and on anti-septic mouth-washes and snuffs. Peasants, terrified ab bhe organisms revealed to them, bought freely the wares offered.

• Vailiant'a movements do not eeem to have been in any way hampered by the surveillance exercised over him, and he breathed bkreateninga and slaughter against socjfety ab Anarchist meetings. Yet here ia his police record: —"Augusbe Vaillant, son of Auguste Vailianb, Josephine Bouyer, die - sinker, sentenced for the first time for shop-lifting to six days at Charleville, 27th May, 1878, ab the age of sixteen ; sentenced to three days for begging ab Marseilles on the 14th December, 1878; sentenced afc Algiers on the 24bh April, 1879, to three months for stealing; sentenced afc Marseilles to one month for thefb oa the 19th September, 1878. A factory workman and noted thief. He has sinde been all over South America." This record is at the Department of Public Safety and the Prefecture of Police. He would have registered his Choisy and Rue Daguerre lodgings ab both places. 1 Vaillanb was not a man to take any one into his confidence. Ho was always starting schemes. A forbnighb ago; he seems to have nad a schema for collecting Socialists and Revolutionists under lria banner, perhaps to sell them or thoir votes. _To this end he gave up his situation in a fancy leather factory, and advertised in the " Revolte " that he wanted to found a popular library, to further which aim he appealed to Socialist authors and scientific men. He only asked them to send copies of their writings. A police agent was sent to find out what bis real mobivo was, and went to Vaillant's home to see him there. He was instructed bo go aa an Anarchist workman. They conversed some bime on bhe subject, Vaillanb saying that be wanbed to bo able to manipulate ab will every I Anarchist of the districb of Petiponb. The leather dresaer wlfere he worked says thab Vailianb under the name of Marcband came to him last July to say he was starving, implored his pity and asked for work. He said he came from Buenos Ayres and was found able to epeak Spanish and to write business letters in thab tongue. He wanted to be employed as a clerk, bub there was no vacancy, and he hadsto enter as a workman. For some time he was regular and quieb, and had no friends excepb one Raynal. The two were always trying to talk alone. Raynal was a proteasing Anarchist, bub a quieb, regular workman. Vaillanb wenb away on November 18th. Raynal disappeared one : afternoon and then returned to draw wbab wages were clue. Ho came to work at the factory on September the 18th and lodged in the same house with Vaillant, with whom he boarded.'

It is pointed out by a Paris correspondent thab ib was a singularly easy business for Vaillant to obtain access to the gallery of the French Chamber from which he dropped his home-made bomb. Not oniy in no paaa required, bub practically no surveillance is •exercised over those frequenting the galleries. Solax indeed have the authorities been in the matter, thabib is said bo have been the habit for some time past for homeless persons to quit their usual quarters in the Bois de Boulogue in dirty weather and sleep in this gallery during the sittings of the Chamber. A man carrying a parcel would nob become the object of any buspicion, as visitors were in the habit of taking food into the gallery, and holding a sort of picnic amongst themselves. Such a state of things ia a marvellous contrast to the rules and regulations in forco ab our own House, and indeed ab any other legislative building. The Trafalgar Square. T"he Anarchists who in the lace of Saturday's? explosion, ventured to assemble in Trafalgar Square last Sunday, had every reason\to be thankful for the pouring rain. Had the afternoon been rino and bhe bourgersie turned oub in their nsual strength, 'Arry and 'Arriet would have given Mr Nicholl and his co-mates 'what-for' I with a vengeance. Even as things were, ib took a strong guard of police to prevent the absurd little editor of the • Commonweal' from being ducked in the fountain. The spectacle presented by Nicholl — who stands about four feet high, and^ has a huge head covered with stiff bristles—as he capered aboub behind a cordon of police breabhing bombs, murder, and sudden death, was sufficiently ridiculous. Any other time the crowd would havo roared with laughter, but on Sunday the recollection of bho rarevioua day's attempted holocaust, roused bhem to fury. Ultimately the police ra«i Nicholl off at double quick up St. Martin's Lane, while several other spouters were hunted briskly towards Westminster and the Square cleared. A limp and draggled woman tried vaiuly to sell copies of the 'Commonweal' on the Square early in the afternoon. Two respectable men at lasb bought oofc her stock and tore the papers up. She smiled : • You may do that and welcome. I don'b core a farden now I've gob 'i 3 nexb week's meals in ray pockofc.' This was the revolutionary Nicholl'a wife. . «, . Apropos of the Anarchist scare in Spam, and in connection with that moat gruesome exploit of the ' Mad doga of Society,' the bomb throwing ab bhe Lyceo Theabre, Barcelona, ft good story is going round. A formerly well-known cricketer whom we may dub Mr A. H. Smith, was travelling in aunny Spain with his wife, and was at Barcelona about the time of the r9cent explosiouß. His relatives wbo had received no news of the wanderers for some time, be- J came very anxious aboub Mr Smith and his wife when the telegraphic accounb of the Ljceo outrage was published, and induced the Foreign Office to wire to the authorities at Barcelona to make enquiries. The initial telegram waa sent somewhat in this form : •Arthur Smith, British subject, in Barcelona during late outrages. Kindly make enquiries and wire result.' A few hourß later the reply came— • The man Smith ia in Barcelona. He is being closely watched.' And again a little later came a further telegraphic report from Barcelona, the which 'pim^ the Foreign Office people not a little. • , . 1 The man Smith attempted to leave Barcelona Jaob niiihfc. Is now in custody.' Lator on tlie Foreign Office was in receipt of a telegram from Mr Smith himself. 'Owing to your confounded telegram, have ppenb twenty-four hours in Spanish gaol. What on earth do you mean.' And the Foreign Office answered never a word to tho angry man. A THUMrEB. There is a story from Yankee-land which is at once a sublimation of the snake yarn and the fishing tale. A man of Meadville —a regular church-goer, by the way—was one day walking along the river bank. He was eating a sandwich at the time, bub finding that the meat therein was nob ab all proportionate to the amount of encompassing bread,, threw bhe redundant portion o£ the latter into the stream. A

number of beautiful troub swarmed round ib on the instant, fighting desperately among themselves for bhe mouthful. The man from Meadville searched his pockets vainly for something in the shape of fishing tackle. But he searched in vain, he had not even a piece of twine nor a pin to bend for a hook. He sank down in despair and was feeling very very disconsolate when suddenly the long, lithe form of a black snake emerged from some long grass just in front of him. In a flash there came to his mind a tale his father used to tell him in the years long gone by, namely, that black snakes were very expert at cabching troub. The man sprang to his feet, gripped the reptile by its tail, carried it struggling to the river, and held it over the ewarm^ of fish round the the piece of bread. The snake proved itself a born angler, and in the course of an hour the man from Mead--1 ville had captured over two score fine trout. The veracious chronicler adds thab when bhe man walked down by tho river side next day he felt something rub against his legr. He looked down, and to his surprise saw his friend bhe black auake ' eager for more eport.' Cremations. The Dowager Duchess of Sb. Albans, whose remains were cremated ab Wokihg last Saturday, is by no means bhe firat of tho upper ton urn-buried. Tho late Baron Hudelston ordered his corpse to bo burnt, and his wishes were duly carried out. Other notable latter-day cremations hare been those of the Duke of Bedford, who died in 1891; of Lord and Lady Bramwell (dying wifchin three months of each other); of Mr A. W. Kinglake, the historian ; of M. Emil Behuke, the voice specialist, and of the Late Earl of Soubhesk. The annual cremations ab Woking now run up to between 30 and 40, and are steadily increasing. Beauties of 1593. The society beauties of '92 are mosb of them reigning still. The young Duchoß* of Sutherland (nob. Duchess Blair), Georgina, Lady Dudley, Lady Brooke (now Lady Warwick), Lady Fowls, and Lady Fitzgerald all hold their own well against newcomers. Of these, tho yoangeab is Princess Honry of Pleas (nee Miss Cornwallia WeHb), and the loveliest the Princess Helene D'Odeaos, The latter is the lady whom poor Prince * Eddie' is credited with having desired to marry. Unfortunately, there were insurmountable difficulties in the way. It was after his disappointment on her accounb the young man so wed the very mild crop of wild oats which, according to report, culminated in a scrape with a Gaeity chorister. 1 believe there is no doubt whatover the poor fellow was devotedly attached to Princess Helene, Analysis of Patent Medicines. Continuing the analysis of patent medicines, which I commenced in my ' London Gossip' last mail, we now come to the renowned ' Beecham's Pills ' worth—as their inventor etates—' a guinea a box.' and perhaps the best advertised medicine in tho world. Professor Stokes, the public analyst, finds that they are made of aloea, 2 parts ; ginger, 2 parts ; soap, 1 part; the active ingredient being, as in Holloway, Sequah and Mother Siegel, thab cheap and efficient purgative, aloes. Warner's Safe Cure is a remedy greatly in vogue amongsb the poor, the large size of the bottle (16oz) dispensed being a favourite feature. Mr Stokes avers the principal and sole active ingredient of this mixture is nitre, alias saltpetre, alias nitrate of potash, of which a 16oz bottle contains no less than 315 groins. He also extracted from it (in addition to nitre and waters l^oz of glycorine, $oz of treacle, 2oz of rectified spirits, a few drops of ,oil of wintergreen, and a few drops of extract ot liver wort. He could nob first! any alkaloid or auy of the drugs usually employed vi tho treatment of Brighb's disease, tor which Warner's Safe is alleged bo be a specific, [b i 9 nob our business to inquire how. Mr Warner pretends to geb the better of a fell complaint like Brighb's disease with salbpobre, bub ib is fair to the public bo point oub bhab according to Mr Stokes the Cure contain? a quantity, -i.e. 124 percent., of alcohol, which (as every doctor will tell you) Bhould be administered with the utmost care in Bright's disease.

From Warner's Safe Cure iofc us pass to the miracle working St. Jacob's Oil. Of thin preparation the famous analyst. Dr. Selkirk Jones, says : The contents aro oil of turpentine, in which is dissolved ordinary camphor, the whole being scented with a little oil of thyme.

In addjbion to patent medicineß, Hygiene has had the best known hair restorers analysed. Allen's Hair Restorer, Boz bottle: Sulphur. 75|grs ; acetate of lead, 87gr.H. Mexican Hair Restorer: Acetate of load, Ipt; precipitated sulphur, 4pts ; glycerine, 30pts ; water, lOOpts. Rowland's Kalydor : Bitter almonds (blanched), loz ; "corrosive sublimate, Bgrs ; rose water, 16oz. *Labterly this has wisely been eliminated.