SOCIAL GOSSIP FROM HOME.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7778, 4 February 1891, Page 3

SOCIAL GOSSIP FROM HOME.

Weekly Press. LONDON, Nor. 28. I never remember auch Intense public and social excitement as that which h&s

prevailed during the week over the momentous question—"Will Parnell sit tight f Never have I witnessed such & breaking-up of the great fountains of the deep—such a complete topsy-torvydom of ideas and sentiments. In private there Iβ not much difference of view-, nor any display of emotion one way or the other. A saturnine bachelor, who has the fancy to head a revolutionary movement as a pastime, has formed a liowon with a flighty and attractive woman of his own age, hailing from a huntting county, and versed in garrison life—and the thing has got into the papers, that is all. There are dozens of such affairs known and recognised In society and the world at large. One or two other political leaders are in similar chains, as are many leading admirals, generals, officials, artists, actors, peers, millionaires, and " Q.C.*s." The man, in such cases, is primafarie an object of men's sympathy. ' How did he get entangled? will he ever get free? such are the questions to which his condition gives rise. But on the great outside public, the effect in this case has been far otherwise. The outside public never learns anything. Year after yearitgoesthrongh itscourseof Divorce Court Bhockß,steadily from November to July, but it knows no more of human nature in its old age than it did in i s childhood. "When the O'Shea case was at hearing, the first and only thought of the Giadstonians was—"How will the Irish i take it? If they stand it, why, well let it pass." But gradually—no man knows how—a party "within the party made itself manifest, coming to be called the " New Dissentients." Day after day, man after man arose to repudiate Mr Parnell and all his works—some of these were worthy and religious men enough, but there were joined unto them many unworthy fellows one, for example, a drunken and immoral buffoon; another a man of fashion, just released after many agonising throes from a like liaison with a Scotch peeress; a third, a young fellow who has lately been repudiated by an heiress for his heartless treatment of her extra-legal predecessor, aud so on —such a procession of bare-faced hyprocrltes as never before crossed the worlds stage. The procession was whipped in by Mr Gladstone himself— although Ido not wish to be understood as saying that he is a hypocrite—ln his socalled letter to Mr Morley, which was really a letter to Mr Parnell, although it never got delivered to him for whom it was intended. The Tories, like the Gladetonians, have undergone a complete revulsion of feeliug, or, rather, of attitude. They were at first all for drumming Mr Parnelloutofpolittcallife; nowthatpnrase is being used by Mr Stead, who has reentered tbe office of the PaU Mall Gazette in order to take up the work of " smashing the Irish party," a task which he wae in two minds to undertake over this very O'Shea matter four years ago. The Tories are beglnuing to perceive that it is much for their interest that Mr Parnell should "sit tight"; and as that will apparently involve the political extinction of Mr Gladstone, wonderful is their change of feelI ine towards their Irish foe. All the theatres hare tbeir allusion to the case, or, at any rate, some lines which are taken as an (illusion, and roared at accordingly. In "LaCigale" there is an absurd Flemish duke, who say?, " When I see a fellah makin' love to another fellah's wife, and the twofellabs the best of friends all the time, I ." How the sentence ends I know not, for there is such a yell of laughter from all parts of tbe House that the actor's voice is drowned. The first night after the case was at hearing, the actor was fairly paralysed by the merriment he had caused, the lines never having got a laugh before. The divorce case in which Lady Oonnemara has obtained a decree agalnet her husband, the late Governor of Madras, had no features of romance or excitement, as it arose out of an intrigue with a waitingmaid. . It ends the official career of a man who was universally popular, and had proved himself the best Governor Madras has known in modern times. It is somewhat absurdly argued that as his Lordship "resigned" on being brought into the Divorce Court, therefore Mr Parnell ought to have "resigned." But the analogy would be more perfect if Mr Parnell was in receipt of several thousands a year from public funds, was decorated and ennobled by the Crown, lived in a Government house, and was charged, with representing the Queen for all social and official purposes. Apropos of Mr Gladstone's threatened retirement fiom political life if Mr Parnell stays, I have heard that he ban been constantly expressing a view lately that the one pressing need of the human race at this moment is a new edition of " Paley'e Evidences," and that he has expressed a sort of half determination to make that the task, of his remaining years. It was suggested co him, a few days before the O'Shea cyclone burst, by a lady admirer, thut he had another task before him in giving Home Rule to Ireland. " No," he said, with atwinkleinhiseye, "Salisbury has no prejudices. He will Introduce Home Rule. I shall support him; the thing will go through lv a month; and then I shall be free to wrestle withPaley." • eceraber 5. MrLewishasbeen questioned plaintively by many Giadstonians since the trial at the absence of even " a halibi " (as the elder Weller called it), and has explained that he hardly regarded himself as lVf r Parnell's legal adviser in the matter. He had not seen him. he said, since early in the year, when he called for the £5,000 cheque paid as damages by the proprietors of the Titncs for libel.' " I sufcßeated to him," continued the imperturbable George, " that 1 should cash the cheque, and give him my own for £4,700, which would just pay my bill of costs, but he said that was a separate matter, and so I have found it, and he took the Times cheque." The two sections of the Irish party are now known as the "Irish party proper" and the •♦ Irish party improper," the latter being led by Mr ParThere is this much obvious justification for the suggestion of the CHadstonians that Mr Parnell is labouring under cerebral excitement, that since hi* broach with the Radicals he has developed a force, lucidity, and elegauce of expression both in oratory and writteu composition of which he who wed no signs before. Hi« manifesto of last Saturday U regarded by expert composers of state papers as the most luminous thing of it* kind issued since the days of Pitt. [The manifesto aDDeared in our issue of January 10th, p :38.-Ed. W.P.] It might be supposed that in view of the possible ruin of Mr Gladstone's whole political future, he would be sick and depressed. But it Is far otherwise. When on Saturday he was inditing his reply to MrParneU'e manifesto, with his colleagues around him all savage and depressed, he would stop at the end of everysenteuce to descant on the merits of Sir Walter Scott as a novelist, for he was at the time engaged in re-reading the "Bride of Lammermoor" with a view to a visit, which he paid last Tuesday, to see "Rivenawood" at Mr Irving's theatre. Since then he has been chiefly occupied in descanting on Weniyss Reid's "Life of .Lord Houghton," which has just apooared at an unlucky moment, and which no one else (save only the reviewers) has had the heart to read, so intense has been the emotional excitement of th> Parnell scandal. What help* to keep Mr Gladstone cheerful is that he has more cojreut evidence than other people—although I should observe the fact is now generally t recognised—that his breach with Mr Parnell has done him the reverse of barm in the country. His table is littered, as it never was littered before, with letters from opponents or estranged friends, protesting that, eleccorally, they are now his slaves till death. He U no longer the Grand Old Man. H<*ia the Holy Old Man. Evpn where husb »uus are inclined to utick to their conviction?, wive* and daughters bully. them - into a letter of adherence tto the defenders of household honour.