WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 55, 29 November 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

KOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

A Spanish lawyer has received * million pound fee.—This removes the reproach that law is now less profitable than prize-fighting.

America five years ago was demanding freedom of the seas.—Now all she cares about is freedom for the seize.

Major Fitzurse and Dr. Bumpu* were muejh perturbed yesterday on hearing that a gentleman had arrived from Australia with a view to tendering for the Hutt Road work. The Doctor said he felt from the first that the City Council had shown weakness in extending the time-limit for tenders. It was always dangerous to give in to popular clamour in these matters. An extremely seriuqs position would arise if :t were found that a private tenderer could do the work for much less than the Citv Council was proposing to spend. The council expected to collect. about £12,000 a year in special fees from motor vehicles, which used the Hutt Road, and it was going to be most difficult to get through this amount of money in any case. If private people came nosing about wanting to put in tenders the task might be ouite impossible. “There is also grava danger,” said Major . Fitzurse, “that a private firm might actually finish the work.” “A deplorable contretemps in every respect,” said the Doctor. “I sincerely hope our Works Committee had the prudence to insert a that the lowest or any tender would not necessarily be accepted.”

Viscountess 'Morley, whose death is 00110111101x1 this morning, was a stiauge enigma to the general public. No British hook of reference ‘T.D.H.’ has seen says who Lady Morley jvas. “Burke’s Peerage,” which takes a minute interest in such matters, makes no mention at all of any V iscountess Morlev, and the London newspapers, in publishing obituary notices many columns in length when Lord Morley died two months'back, either made no mention whatsoever of Lady Morley, or merely said “Lord Morley was married. He left no heir.” This universal silence was something more than a coincidence, and people overseas can only speculate as to the reason for it, and wonder what the mystery Mas.

The only reference to Lady Morley that ‘T.D.H.’ has come across was in a sketch of Lord Morley by Mr. T. P. O’Connor, published in the London “Daily Telegraph.” Mr. O’Connor last saw Lord Morley on his eightieth birthday during the last year of the war, and wrote: “Seated at a table with his wife and sister —old and frail like himself, reserved like himself—with a meal of stern though comfortable simplicity, a glass of mild white wine—he apologised for not hetng abto to give me any whisky in a whiskyless epoch—seated amid such surroundings that might be a page from Jane Austen’s life of the middle classes in tho far-off Victorian age, he struck me as a symbol of that extraordinary combination and contrast in the life of his country—with its vast Empire controlled from a tiny island and from the dingy houses in the narrow lane dignified with the name of Downing Street, and by men as simple as my host. His talk was animated, but somewhat sad. ‘Do you ask yourself,’ he said to me, alluding to the eternal controversy as to whether men of letters should ever enter the turmoil of political life, ‘do you ask yourself if you have had a squandered life?’ I could only reply that most lives were squandered; to • which he- gave cordial assent”—which assent moved the usually genial “Tay Pay” to observe in melancholy vein that the epitaph that most men of thought and quick sensibility pass upon life as they, near its end is “Vanity of Vanities.”

“Money is not everything in life”— so don’t corrupt the morals of others by letting them get hold of your cash.

Writing a month or two ago of Sir Frederick Weld, who was Governor of New Zealand in the ’sixties, and. who before that helped to take the first sheep into the Wairarapa, T.D.H. mentioned that the AVelds had a famous old home at Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire. Lately there has been controversy in the English papers over a proposal to spoil Lulworth Cove with a gunner)’ school, and this has recalled the story of Lulworth Chapel. Lulworth is one of the curious “pockets” of Catholicism in Dorsetshire, the Weld family of the ‘castle and manor being of the old religion. When towards the end 4 of the eighteenth century George 111 visited Lulworth, the Weld of the time took advantage of the occasion and gained permission to build a Catholic chapel in the parish. The King’s conditions were that it should be in the castle grounds, out of the public view, and should look as little like a church as possible. Accordingly it was planted close by the parish church, which happens to be in the enclosure, and as it stands, still unchanged, it might easily be mistaken for a large mausoleum. The special point about Lulworth chapel is that it was built for public, worship—the first of the kind in England after’ the Reformation.

In his book “Playwrights and Playwriting,” Professor Brander Matthews tells a curious story of Alark Twain in 1874, when an adaptation, in which lie had a hand, of his novel “The Gilded Cage,” was produced in New York. He climbed the eighty steps leading to the offices of the “World” and asked for the City Editor, to whom lip explained that he had eume.to isk him to puff his play. The Editor inquired if it was a good play. “No,”’ was Mark’s drawling answer, “it isn’t a good play. It’s a bad play, a damned bad plnv. ‘ 1 couldn’t write a good play. But it has a good character. I can write character; and that character is the best I can do. If it wae a good play I shouldn’t have had to climb up here to ask you to puff it.

“N.C..” writing from Alarton, sends a. variant of an old story.. Tho Rocky Afcuntain Cvclone.” on its establishment in 1889. he tells us. found that its outfit of true was incomnlete, but got alone with what it bad in hand', with this result:—“We regret to state that the printer who supplied our type neglected to phorward any ephs or ‘cavs.’ which is unnhortunate and places us in a diphicultv. We don’t licoue tho loox of this variety of spelliuo* auv more than our readers, but must do our best. It’s no iocque to us. its a serious aphair. Still, as long as tho ‘nil’s’ and ‘c’s’ h ol, l °”t wo shall ceei> (sound the c hard) the ‘Cyclone’ whirling anhter a phashion till the nussing letters arrive.”

TO THE NOT IMPOSSIBLE HIM. How shall I know, unless I go To Cairo and Cathay. AVhetlier or not this blessed spot Is blest in every wav? Now. it mar be. tho flower for me Is this beneath mv nose: How shall I tell, unless I smell Tho Carthaginian rose ? Tho fabric of my faithful love No power shall dim nor ravel AVhilst 1 stav hero —but oh. my dear, If I should ever travel! —Edna St. .Vincent Millay,