GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9811, 21 August 1897, Page 8

GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Dkan Farrar has two pleasant anecdotes of Archbishop Tait and Canon Kingsley in the Temple Magazine. The Archbishop's instructions to his chaplain in regard to answering the letters of foolish correspondents were usually couched in the words :— " Tell him he is an ass—but say so kindly." Kingsley confided to a friend his feelings about preaching in Westminster Abbey, and said, with a slight stammer:—" Whenever I walk up to the pulpit in the Abbey I wish myself d-d -dead ; and whenever I walk back I wish myself more d-d-d-dead."

A shkaf of unpublished anecdotes and sayings of Jowett are given by the " Diarist" in the July Cornhill. Thus the Master's predilection for bathos is illustrated by a sentence from a letter of congratulation: — " Marriage not only doubles the joys of life, it quadruples them." Again, as an example of his use of the exact epithet the writer tells how, in a lecture, after giving each nation of antiquity an appropriate adjective, he paused on coming to the Egyptians, and then gently smacking his lips once or twice, be continued : " That ambiguous people living on the shores of their ancient river."

A good Jubilee story is told by the Birmingham Daily Argus. The head of a house in Heneage street, Birmingham, and his wife wers suddenly disturbed in the dead of the night by finding their bed moving rapidly towards the window. There wai whistling and sounds in the street. In its course the bedstead overturned the washstand, smashed the crockery, and only stopped when it came up against the wall, when there was a snap, and the sounds outside ceased. The couple were dazed, and imagined another earthquake. Peering out of the window, they saw the Fire Brigade disappearing in the distance. What, then, was the explanation? It turns out that the fire-escape had come along the street and caught in a string of flags stretched across the street. Very incautiously this string had been tied to the bedstead. Hence the movement till the bed encountered the wall. The disturbed householder has been round to the Fire Brigade and put in a claim for compensation, but as yet his claim has created more amusement than serious consideration.

In " A Talk with Val Prinsep, R.A.," which Mary Angela Dickens contributes to the July Windsor Magazine, there are two Tennjson stories. Both relate to Mrs Cameron, the well-known photographer, who was an aunt of the artist. Mrs Cameron knew—and photographed — all the great men of her day. Tennyson in particular was an intimate friend of hers, and another great friend was Sir Henry Taylor. She photographed them both. Tennyson had his little weaknesses, as everyone knows, and one of these was an inclination to depreciate Henry Taylor. "He was looking at the two photographs one day," says Mr Prinsep, "and he said to my annt, 'I always think, do you know, that Henry Taylor has a mouth exactly like a fish.' •If so, Alfred,' retorted my aunt, * it's the mouth of a fish when the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters !'"

Mrs Cameron was not in the habit of sparing her poet friend, for the other story recounts another good-natured and witty snub for Tennyson. A friend of Mrs Cameron's going into his neighbourhood, unwittingly betook herself into the poef s gr(Minds, and there proceeded to make a sketch. She was immediately detected from the house, and emissaries were sent to tell her of the crime she was committing. She expressed her regret, and withdrew at once. But she told the affair to Mrs Cameron, and Mrs Cameron descended upon the poet and spoke her mind, until Tennyson expressed a certain amount of penitence, and pleaded that he bad not known the lady to be a friend of hers. Whereupon Mrs Cameron delivered herself as follows:—" I tell you what it is, Alfred ; she came down here to look for a lion, and she found a bear 1"

Mr Winans, the American millionaire who died recently, retained his American nationality, though for many years he has lived in England. His fortune (says the World) was acquired by railway contracts in Russia, and was partly expended in the indulgence of his extraordinary passion for renting deer-forests. He finally managed to become the occupier of forests which stretched right across Scotland, and, though he maintained a full force of keepers and gillies, he seldom shot over his forests himself, or allowed anyone else to do so. His poorer neighbours will long remember the action he Drought against a crofter in the Court of Session for permtting a pet lamb to graze on one of his forests.

A curious tale of a leg and a legacy was told in the C»urt of Chancery recently. A Welsh lady named Mrs Harding left a legacy to " Daniel Harding who has lost his leg." She had a nephew named Daniel Harding, but he had not lost a leg. She had, however, two other nephews both named Edward Harding, each of whom had lost a leg. To which of the three did she intend to leave the legacy? Daniel was ruled out. He could not have been meant. But then came the difficulty. The two Edwards declined a proposition to divide the money. Fortunately, however, an interesting piece of evidence was available. Mrs Harding had once offered to Edward the First a present of an artificial limb. That proved that she knew that he had lost a leg, and that the fact had impressed itself on her mind. To him Mr Justice Romer threw the handkerchief. But it is awkward (as the St. James's Gazette says) when things get so mixed as this.

The treasures which Lord Esher bad to show his colonial visitors at the Rolls House were many ami various. Before their removal to the magnificent suite of buildings in Chancery Lane, they were stored up in the Rolls Chapel, the White Tower, the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey, Carlton Ride, St. James's Park, the State Paper Office, and the Prerogative Will Office. Among the priceless possessions here contained are the Doomsday Book (800 years old), the original Papal Bull, with golden seal attached, which was sent to Henry VIII.; and the Treaty of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Among his lordship's most noted predecessors are Sir Julius Caesar, William Burstall, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Lord Gifford, Dr. John Young, and Sir William Grant.

If only from an anthropometrical point of view, Mr Rennell Rodd's mission to the Abyssinian Court, seme of the members of which have returned to London, must, it

goes without saying, have<made a considerable impression upon the Emperor Menelik. Captain the Hon. Cecil Bingham, of the let Life Guards, who is a brother-in-law of the Special Envoy, and Captain Speedy, the iuterpreter, are each 6ft 4in in height; Dr. Pinehin, the medical officer, is 6ft 7in, or only lin shorter than Captain 0. Ames, who rode at the head of tl Jubilee procession ; whilst Captain Count Gloichen, of the Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant Lord Edward Cecil, of the same regiment (whose brothers, save Lord Cranborne, M.P., are all tall), are much above the ordinary height.

Thsrb was a large gathering at Christie's recently to watch the sale of a magnificent collection of plate and jewellery. The diamonds were specially notable, but what attracted most attention was the famous necklace that belonged to the late Duke of Manchester, containing no less than 360 large pearls, connected by smaller stones. The bidding started at £2000, and rose gradually to £5200. This sum, however, proved less than the reserve price, and the necklace was accordingly withdrawn. It is said that it had cost the Duke more than £11,000.

That in this Jubilee year the Lord Mayor should be of the Jewish faith is of more than passing interest, because in the year of the last great State function, the marriage of the Duke of York, the Chief Magistrate (Sir Stuart Knilljwas a Catholic Sixty years ago both forms of religion, for anyone aspiring to the post of foremost citizen of the metropolis, would have been anathema maranatha to a very large section of estimable, but ignorant, purblind, bigoted individuals. Yet, who can name two Mayoralties which have passed with more brilliant iclat than thorn of Sir Stiart , KaiU and 8k Qkxma J*udeU>P__liflH

Wesl_ya2C9 may not generally know that a grandson of Charles Wesley, the " Poet of Methodism," is still in the land, hale and hearty. Charles Wesley was born in 1708, in the reign of Queen Anne, and his grandson, Erasmus, has just taken part in the Victorian Jubilee of 1897. Charles, the poet, Samuel Wesley, musician, and Erasmus, who has spent sixty-one years in business in Thames street, London, have occupied a space of 189 years on the earth. Seven British Sovereigns have reigned in this period, and two of them 120 years. The great and great-great-grandchildren of Charles Wesley almost rival in number the descendants of the Queen. 13 not the Wesley " reign" a record ?

It is in the simplicity of his private life that Sultan Abdul Hamid favourably impresses his visitors. He is one of the most plainly dressed men in the Empire. His predecessors did away with the old Turkish costume, but ithey retained the diamond aigrette as an ornaraeno for the fez. Snltan Abdul Aziz, when he visited England, wore an aigrette the diamonds of which must have haunted the dreams of London society, especially of the dowagers. Abdul Hamid did away with the aigrette, considering it an extravagant vanity, and the Imperial fez may be worth, perhaps, three-and-sixpence. When any stranger is favoured with an audience, the Sultan invites him to a seat beside him on the sofa ; he offers his guest a cigarette, Abdul Hamid himself lighting it. No matter how high or how humble the interviewer's status may be, he receives the same little attention from the tobaccoloving Potentate. The Sultan smokes, as the saying is, like a chimney from morning to night. His cigarette box is his most constant and faithful companion, and the one wherein he finds most consolation. Mk Barry Pain, one of the most prolific of the new humourists, has lived for some time at Pinner. His house, which used to be known as The Circuits, and was built by an old Judge, is now styled Cuckoo Hill. There he lives with his wife—a fair-haired, blue-eyed Madonna-like woman—and his family, of which one is a little girl of nearly four years old. Mrs Barry Pain is a niece of Rudolph Lehman, the painter, and a cousin of R. C. Lehman, the great oarsman and Varsity coach, and himself a good deal of a literary man. It was R. C. Lehman who edited the Granta when "8.E.0.P.," as Mr Pain then styled himself, contributed to its pages, and he it was who sent one of the young author's stories to Mr James Payn. Mr Payn, with that generosity to budding writers which has always been his characteristic, desired its enlargement, and | inserted it in the Cornhill, of which he was at that time editor.

Mr Barry Pain went to Cambridge University with the intention of being a schoolmaster, and, after taking his degree in 1886, began teaching at an army crammer's. But it was not long before literature claimed his devotion ; for, soon after Mr Payn's attention had been drawn to him, two other editors wrote him asking for contributions, and so Mr Pain threw up schoolmastering, and came up to town in the year 1890. For quite two years he experienced a very trying time, but he obtained enough reviewing to maintain a decent existence. Happily, his humorous tales, especially "In a Canadian Canoe," won popularity, and he is now contributing comic poems, " omnibus" sketches, smoking-room gossip, and droll stories to several journals and magazines, besides working hard at that famous novel ("The Octave of Claudius"), which has already occupied him four years.

It is said that Mr T. H. Ismay, head of the White Star line, has been offered and refused a baronetcy. This honour, if accepted, would have been most richly deserved, as no man has done so much for the improvement of ocean steam navigation. Born in Cumberland the year the Queen came to the throne, Mr Ismay, early in lite, migrated to Liverpool and founded the magnificent line of steamers that now run from there to New York. In addition to his intimate connection with the White Star line, Mr Ismay has done much good work on several Royal Commissions, and notably acted as Chairman on the Board of Trade Life-saving Appliances Committee. *

It was Mr I*may who first introduced the idea of arming our fast merchant steamers by offering to place the whole of the White Star fleet at the disposal of the Government as cruisers and transport boats in the time of war. This has resulted in several other of the large lines following suit, so that now the Admiralty have a fleet of the fastest boats afloat, practically ready at any moment to act as armed cruisers or transports. Those who were fortunate enough to witness the great Naval Review must have been impressed with the splendid appearance of the Teutonic with her quick-firing guns mounted and full equipment ready for service.