LONDON GOSSIP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 66, 17 March 1894, Page 11 (Supplement)

LONDON GOSSIP.

(From our Special Correspondent.)

London, February 2.

Wanted for News.—FrvE Hundred Pounds. ;

A person, who ia believed to be a dismissed servant from one of the Royal households, has been going the rounds of the London newspaper offices, demanding the sum of five hundred pounds for a piece of news of paramount interest and importance, which he alone can impart. * He; gravely informed Mr Oust), of the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' that he should require him to sign a bond pledging himself to pay the £500 after hearing the secret. Until the editor did that, he could not divulge it. ' Bosh !' was the reply. ' Out with your news. If I use ib I give you my word I will pay the £500 ; if I don't, I shall keep your secret.' 1 Oh ! I couldn't do that. I'm not going to trust anyone,' said the stranger, loftily. 1 May I inquire,' asked Mr Oust, ' why anyone should trust you. But (sharply), I am too busy to wasto time over puerilities. Either state your news, sir, at once, or go.' (tie rang the bell.) On this the stranger climbed down. ' Mitrhb he have bill afternoon to consider the offer?' 'No, he might nob.' 'Might he have an hour ?' 'Mot half an hour, nor even five minutes. Good morning.' and the fellow was shown out. Subsequently it iiltored round (from another sphere) in that mysterious manner things do, that the live hundred pounds worth would have been dear at five shillings, being a silly piece of gossip concerning royalty which had been common property at the Ciubs for days past, and was useless for newspaper purposes. During the week there have been numerous alleged • authorised denials' regarding H.R.EL's retirement from society, and the Prince and Princess of Wales have come to town together, to give the lie direct to the 'rumoured differences between the Royal couple.'

I ana assured that the ill-natured insinuations auent the Princess's mental condition and the persistent declarations that there is nothing whatever the matter with her are equally untrue. As I told you last week H. R. H. sutlers from deafness, and no doubt latterly has exhibited some symptoms of eccentricity. In a private person the litter would probably have passed unnoticed, but in a palace trifles are immediately magnified, and get goasiped about and exaggerated even before they trickle out of doors. In addition to Prince Eddie's loss, the poor Princess suffered a severe shock in the death of Colonel the Hon. Oliver Montague, who was her equerry, and to whom she—and indeed all her family —were warmly attached.

Tho irritation caused by the current gossip and newspaper paragraphs, will not improbably do more than anything else to allay the original mischief. Whatever grounds for talk there may have been both Prince and Princess may be trusted to do their utmost to evidence their baselessness. The Royal Family have plenty of esprit de corj)s, and the Princess especially is proud of die affection and popularity she has inspired. She must be ill indeed ere she does anything to risk either.

James, Son of Jabez. .There are few victims of Jabez Balfour's cnines who deserve greater sympathy than his unhappy son James. After deliberately ruining him as completely as any of the Liberator shareholders, he left him penniloss to boar the brunt of the obloquy, and to support his mother. Interviewed James Balfour laughed grimly over the report that he had placed his father's defence in eminent hands, for thie is his own case, as he describes it :— 11 have boon absolutely ruined by the failure of these companies. I was a director, of the Liberator for the last nine months ot its existence. I had £600 in shares in the Liberator, which I,- of course, lost. In addition, as a director of the Liberator, I was liable under two bonds for £20,000. lo was this liability which mainly resulted in my bankruptcy.' ' How did you become a director of the Liberator under such conditions." It must already have been in shallow waters.' • I wa9 invited by the Chairman (Mr Pattison) and the other directors. My father assented to the arrangement. I joined the Board in January, 1892, and the Society failed in September, 1§92. I never received a penny of the directors' fees, nor any money in any form belonging to the Society. My connection with the Society was so small thai) when the public examination was on, the Official Receiver did not call me as a, witness.' That ia to say, 6 months before the crash, which had been inevitable for several years and was plainly staring in the face of everyone who knew the position of the companies, Mr James Balfour, who was till then unentangled, was brought in as a director, and made liable under two bonds for £20,000. When the crash came, Mr Jabez Balfour cob clear away, whereas Mr James Balfour, his son, was left with total ruin facing him. 'My father,' says Mr James Balfour, •assented to tbe arrangement'—the arrangement, that is, by which his son became a director of the Liberator and which led to his disastrous liability. It is not the least extraordinary circumstance of the Liberator story that Mr Jabez Balfour should have tailed to warn his son of the impending ruin. Mr Jamas Balfour declares that the stories which allege his father to have taken large sum 3 with him are untrue. That depends, of course, on the meaning of the terms ' large,' and we are not likely to know the truth of this matter until Mr Jabez Balfour submits to his examination in bankruptcy. It is clear that ho was not in the habit of disclosing his private circumstances to his eon.

Finally, Mr Jamas Balfour adds :—' I wish to say,' answered Mr Balfour, • fchafc the statement which has been published to the effect that the family ask the public in judging Mr Balfour to remember that the charges brought against him are different from those brought against Wright and Hobbs is, so far as I am concerned, without foundation. I have nob asked, and I do not ask, the public to do anything of the sort.'

Amongst the sycophants whom the shrewd Jabez used with rare acumen was the Rev. Dawson Burns, a temperance advocato and Nonconformist with considerable influence. It was through Burns tho Liberator in its early days was set going. Jabez got at Burns, Burns got at ministers all over tho country, and tha ministers gob at their flocks. Burns knew Jabez from youth, and, as he fondly thought, to the cockles of his noble heart. 'A Blessing to Mankind.1 One of the officials who has been overhauling the good Jabez's correspondence came upon the following, from which it will be seen that the accused did nob, in his juvenile years, lack a good counsellor and an earnest well-wisher. My very dear Jabez, —It is with a ,very great deal of love that I write thi9 note to you on the day that you are four years old. I pray to God that he may give you health of body, and a bright, sound, good mind, and thac you may live a long, long time to be your father's, brothers', and sister's pride, and to make your mamma's eye to beam and her heart to beat with joy. You wilK find with this a half-crown, which mamma will spend and buy for you what she thinks is right, and I hope, my dear Jabez, that at last you will have one of those crowns of Glory which Jesus gives to those who do what He tells them, and thab are crowns

which shine for ever and over,—From yoat affectionate teacher, (Signed) Dawson Brass, Another of his epistles was an episbolatorj» ode—written on paper with a fancy lacs border—also sent by Dr. Burns on Balfou* attaining his majority on September 4bb, 1864. These were the first Wo verses i«~ I saw thee when a new-bom babe, A stranger come to town, • And size and form both seemed to say •He's destined for renown.'. , I saw thee dally, and thy course \ I watched with interest too, > And often wondered what the boy Would finally come to. Here is one of the lash verses:— And now what shall I wish for thee! All good in heart and mind, A ioy of all thy friendt and me, A blessing to mankind. If the sad experience of Mr Burns lead to Nonconformist parsons leaning less trustingly on the wealthy members of their congregations and keeping eyes and ears open, t the Liberator crash may not have done all harm. A Fatal Blunder. The death of that promising young diplomatist, Sir Gerald Portal, in the heyday of bis success came as an unexpected shock to the public, very few of whom evea knew he was ill. Portal had faced death during his eventful career in many forms. In Africa the natives believed he bore a charmed life, so often had bullets and arrows and poisons fail ad in their mission, so impervious to the death-dealing malaria did this magnificent Englishman appear. Yet ib was left for Sir Gerald to die in his own house and his own bed, the victim—if the stories one hears be ■ true—of as melancholy a medical blunder as has ever been made. Symptoms of fever declared themselves on Christmas Eve, and were believed by both Sir Gerald himself and the doctors to be simply a recurrence of the malaria from which he had suffered recently ia Uganda. Fed up in the usual manner, however, he got worse instead of better, and ultimately the disease proclaimed itself unmistakeable typhoid. The treatment of the two fevers is diametrically opposite lam assured: You starve one and feed the other. Sir Gerald for several days was the victim of a blunder, and his constitution, already weakened by Africa, failed to rebouud.

Sir Gerald Portal was a splendid specimen of the best English typo, tall, abhlefeie and commanding, the very man to im> press savage races. His important missions to Abyssinia and Uganda were most successful, and in many quarters he was looked upon as Lord Uromer's likeliest understudy. After the manner of Stanley and most penetrators of tho mysteries of the heart of Africa, Portal was silent and often mistive, but (remarks the 1 Telegraph ') he understood and appreciated a joke? His face would light up with a merry twinkle when he told you, for instance,, how, on the way up to Zanzibar* the smooch - faced Captain ' Roddy ' Owen fell ill, and had to be carried wrapped in white coverings on a litter—the reporb spreading everywhere that the ConsulGeneral was bringing with him to the, domain of the Sultan a white lady of; Burpassing beau-ty. Towards the end of. the arduous • journey the curiosity of His Majesty was piqued by the vivid rumours, that reached him, and he lived in auch expectancy that on arrival the precious burden was eagerly sought after and inspected. When Portal returned from bia Abyssinian Mission in 1887 he wrote a narrative of his adventures. He fell into the hands of and was kept for some time a prisoner t>y the notorious Abyssinian General Ras Alula. When he reached the capital, however, he was received very civilly by the King, and made very comfortable during his stay. On leaving, the King presented him with the native costume, Mr Portal's mission was not regarded as a great success by the Italians, bub to the tacb he displayed in dealing with King John no doubt was due the promotion which came to him very soon afterwards. It was noted as a curious facb ab the time that in the letter which he brought) home with him, King John addressed Her Majesty as * by the grace of God, Queen of Ireland, Empress of India,' etc., and it waa nob unnaturally supposed that some echoea of the Home Rulfl wrangle had even reached the sable potentate of Ethiopia. The ' Daily Telegraph ' recalls some of the remarkable details of Portal's adventures whilst on bho Abyssinian Mission^ He took with him Veterinary-Surgeon B eec h—now Captain 20th Hussars—and a faithful servant, Hutchison. Almosb ab tha outset the small party had to contend with the treachery of guides, who deliberately lod them astray, and then deserted them. The decision of character which formed a strong feature in the Leader came oub in this crisis.'

After a succession o.f troubles duly recounted, Portal, hia two English companions, and Ahmed Fehmy were lefb in the pathless, waterless deserb, with every chance of perishing, aa did four years earlier Hicks Pasha and his 11,000 men. Water could be found nowhere. There was only one alternative, bo return guideless to the Italian camp. ' 'At the moment when this resolution was com© to,' narrates Portal, 'poor Ahmed Fehmy waa making himsolf useful by sitting on a stone and moaning to himself!' His Arab nature was nob equal to the emergency. Before returning the mules were stripped and everything except the box containing the Queen's and^ Lord Salisbury's letter waa thrown away. Worn with anxiety, exhausted by fatigue, and still mote with thirst, they began their retreat Sir Gerald writes:— Already oar tongues were refusing their wonted office, and the strongest voice that could issue from our parched throats through our blackend lips was a husky, strained, sibilant whisper. Meanwhile, Ahmed Fehmy again and again fell behind, and at lasb it waa necessary to leave him. There was no choice. . . . Had I hesitated for a moment whether to make one more halt, one more effort to bring Ahmed Fehmy along, a single glance at the fixed, staring eyes, the pinched, drawn faces, and the benb figures of my remaining followers would have sufficed to convince me that but one order could be given if any of us were to see the light of to-morrQw's sun —'Push on.' . . Ahmed Fehmy waa afterwards found dead—the victim of want of plucK ; not his specially, but the mark of his race. He had water and food later than we ; his lips were red and ours were black. (Subsequently the reader will be pleased to know Her Majesty's Government made a grant of £450 for the poor man'a family.) Hour by hour our diminished party rods elowly on, under the burning sun, the only living and moving creatures in thab vast? scorching, deadly wilderness, our eyes fixed on the ground, looking for every sign which should tell us we were still in the path tha<J we had toiled over on our outward march. At one time the route was lost, when fortunately Hutchisson picked up a pockeb handkerchief which Beech had dropped, and so told us that the. way was right. At a time when our physical and mental powers of endurance were all bub ex« hauabed when our eyes could scarcely distinguish the stones beneath our feet, and my own eyes were playing ma all sorts of tricks, and showing me green grass, waving trees, and sparkling pools of water on every side, a loosemule, relieved of his load, took up the lead. As though h6 guessed the failure of the faculties of his human masters, he assumed the responsibility, never going too far ahead, and never lagging behind. The other mules nnd horses instinctively acknowledged his leadership rtvA kerned of thel? own accord.