GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9989, 19 March 1898, Page 8

GOSSIP AND NOTES.

Mr Clemens himself would probably be surprised to find his name figuring in a list of authors recommended to the study of local preachers, yet this honour is conferred upon him by a correspondent c-f the Methodist Times, who sandwiches his "* New Pilgrim's Progress" between John Ashworth's " Walks -in Canaan " and the Lives of the Methodist worthies. The warning is given, however, that Mark Twain is to be administered only to the reader who M understands the difference between American humour and lying." If he has this essential quality of the critic he will find beneath the extravagant drollery '' the mind of a 'cute, observant, and—ye*—reverent traveller in the Holy Land."

One of the most undoubted of what Lord Ashbourne has called " the uses in connection with the Viceroyalty " seems to be the brisk business in the sale and hire of secondhand articles of male and female attire for the State ceremonials of the Dublin Castle season. In the Irish Times recently there appeared a series of advertisements in view of the approaching Viceregal levees and drawing-rooms, offering dress, court, military, and fancy costumes for hire. A court suit, " nearly new and large size," has been offered for 30s ; a " third-class Minister's court suit" ia also advertised, and a velvet court suit is for sale at a moderate price. On the other hand, there is an advertiser for a white court train on hire for second drawing-room, and infantry dress belts and sashes in good condition are also in demand.

A lady who once stayed in the same house with Mrs Carlyle for a week contributes her recollections to the Temple Magazine for February. She says—" Mr Carlyle was with his relatives in Scotland. Letters came from him every day, and they were read with eagerness. One of those letters contained a small pattern of tweed cloth, which she showed mc, saying, *He wants my opinion on this, and to know whether I advise him to have a suit made of it.' Generally, she said, such matters were entirely settled by her ; so much so,-that when the tailor's man came to try on a frock coat, he always asked for her decision. Turning to her, he would say, ' Should you like a velvet collar, madam ?'"

Long years of bad health had, the writer goes on to say, left Mrs Carlyle very much an invalid. It was an effort to walk much, and her hands were weakened by rheumatism so that it was impossible for her to make any return for the letters daily received. She was wofuily thin, and the charm of her early days could only be imagined. When speaking of her husband, Mrs Carlyle never made use of his name, but only of the pronouns he and him. "I like," she said, "to give people presents anonymously that they may guess from whom they come. Once I gave him an umbrella as a birthday gift; but he is so stupid that he used it for a whole year without knowing who was the giver."

Many stories have been published a__ut the late Laureate having been constantly pestered by Americans, " many of whom flattened their noses against the windows of the Laureate's dining-room." Mr J. F. Fasham, who was a neighbour of the poet at Freshwater, describes these stories in "Eureka" as "arrant nonsense." As a matter of fact, not once in a month would an American tourist be seen in the neighbourhood of Farringford House, and Mr Fasham affirms that his experience of such tourists in that part does not justify the notion that Americans on tour are in the habit of behaving less decorously than other people.

One thing that impressed Mr r'asham when he first went to live at Freshwater was the little the local rustics appeared to know of the great Englishman. From the conversations with them he learned they regarded " Muster . Tennyson " with some respect, because they had heard he was " zummet to the Queen," but what that " zummet" was the bucolic mind seemed incapable of realising. That the poet could be urbane and long-suffering, even in the presence of awful discord, must be acknowledged from the fact that during a good part of the sixties there was a village drum and tin-whistle, band, led by a screeching piccolo; and on many an occasion these disturbers of the stilly night played while the Laureate dined; and yet not only were they permitted to depart with their lives when the din was over, but coals of fire, in the shape of a substantial honorarium, were frequently heaped upon them.

The Queen of the Netherlands will come of age on August 31st, when she celebrates her eighteenth birthday, and her Majesty's coronation will take place at Amsterdam a few days later. The Prince and Princess of Wales will represent the Queen 'at the coronation, and there is to be a special mission from our Court besides. Queen Wilhelmina is the greatest Royal match in Europe, and every unmarried Protestant prince who is an eligible candidate in. position and character will be "in the running" for her Majesty's hand. The Hereditary Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Prince Harold of Denmark (third son of the Crown Prince) have been much mentioned as likely King Consorts of the Netherlands, but at Court it is generally expected that Queen Wilhelmina will. marry either her cousin, Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar (who is himself immensely rich), or Prince Frederick of Prussia, eldest son of the Prince Regent of Brunswick, whose mother was the wealthy and eccentric Princess Marianne of tbe Netherlands.