WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 237, 21 June 1926, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Mention in the news to-day of. an action at law to preserve the ancient monopoly rights of Covent Garden Market reminds us that the sale of this famous market thirteen years ago formed part of the biggest land deal on record in Britain. On that occasion nineteen acres of the centre of London passed from the hands of the Duke of Bedford, whose ancestors had held it for nearly four centuries, to the late Sir Joseph Beecham, who began his career manufacturing pills in a shed at St. Helens, Lancashire, and crying his wares in the market place of that town.

The Covent Garden property did not pass direct from the Duke to Sir Joseph' Beecham, for an intermediary was Sir Harry Mallaby Deeley, who acquired more recent fame by buying up from the present Duke of Leinster the latter’s reversionary interest in the huge Leinster estates, when two lives stood between the Duke and his heritage. It was stated at the time that the purchase money for the Covent Garden deal was in the vicinity of £3,000,000, but this seems to have been wide of the mark, for at last year’s meeting of the Beecham Estate Trust the property was mentioned as being worth a million and a half. However, what with the pills and their London landlordism, the trust had a profit of £301,000 to record for the year.

Covent Garden was originally the vegetable garden of the Abbey and Covent of Westminster until Henry VIII. deprived that wealthy establishment of its possessions, and conferred the vegetable garden of nineteen acres on the Duke of Somerset. On the Duke’s attaineder this little plot of land, then having a yearly value of £6 6s. Bd., was given by King Bluebeard in 1552 to his faithful courtier, John Russell, first Earl of Bedford, a consistent picker-up of unconsidered trifles. Tha actual market was established about a century when stalls for the sale of vegetables were set up at the back of Bedford House, and by 1678 the market rights were let for “four-score pounds of lawful money of England.” The site became valuable as a market because at the time it was established fashionable London lived round about' on the Bedford estate. Society has moved away long ago, but, beginning with the erection of the first Drury Lane Theatre in 1663 on the site of Drury House, the home of the oncepowerful Drury family, the district has became a centre of theatre land.

When the Duke of Bedford sold tha property in 1913 it had on it, in addition to Covent Garden Market, and it> numerable hotels and more or less fam l ■ ous buildings, the following theatres? The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Drury Lane Theatre, the Strand ' Theatre, and the Aldwych Theatre. At all of these playhouses the Duke had a freehold box, which boxes passed over to the possession of the famous pill - manufacturer. That big caravanserai, . the Waldorf Hotel, is on the property, ' as is the far-famed Bow Street Police Court, the headquarters of the Bow Street runners of bygone days, and housed elsewhere on it is also the National Sporting Club.

The other day we chanced on .a report in an English newspaper of a man being'fined at Leeds for driving his horse while drunk. The report was a little vague as to whether it was the man or the horse that was in this deplorable condition, but what struck us most was the unusual character of the offence. Every day in New Zealand motor drivers are being arrested for driving while in a state of intoxication, but what an extraordinarily long time it is since any driver of a horse-drawn vehicle in this country was discovered by the police to be the worse for liquor. What has happened? Is it only teetotallers who drive horses nowadays, and have the imbibers of alcohol become so universally affluent that they all possess motor-cars? Such prosperity is clean contrary to what w e were taught came of looking on the wine when it was red, but there seems no other explanation.

When Sir Robert Houston, the millionaire shipowner, died the other day the English newspapers were full of most eulogistic obituary notices. A little while later when the terms of the deceased gentleman’s will were published they completely changed their tune, for in that document he declared most emphatically that his only domicile was in the Channel Islands, a happy land where there are no death dutiese on millionaire estates. Thus, having praised Sir Robert for his virtues one day, the same journals. felt bound to turn round and take it all back, the next day, for a man whose last act is to try to dodge the tax collector—an unsuccessful effort, by the way—has, of course, to be severely censured. It has been suggested that henceforth the newspaper obituary, notices on millionaires should be indicated as being subject to revision on the proving of the will.

The following rather quaint defence was made to .an action in an Indian civil suit by a lawyer:—“Your Honour, there are three points in this case. In the first place, we contend that the article was cracked when we borrowed it; secondly, it was whole when we returned it;’and, thirdly, if Your Honour decides that we never had it, then there is an end of the matter. The matter is very simple.”

"I wish I had taken my mother's advice when she begged me not to marry you.” “Did vour mother try to keep yon from marrying me?” “Oh, how I have wronged that woman!” Pawnbroker (to his son on discovering his gold fish dead) : “My boy, did you kill my leetle gold fish?” “Yes, father. I put some, acid in. They were not gold at all. You have been had.” “ARE THERE NOT, THEN, TWO MUSICS?” Are there not, then, two musics unto men?— One loud and bold and coarse, And overflowing still perforce All tone and tune beside; Yet in despite its pride Only of fumes of foolish fancy bred. And sounding solely in the soundin® head: The other soft and low, Stealing whence we not know, Painfully heard and easily forgot. With pauses oft and many a silence strange (And silent oft it seems, when silent It is not), Reveals too of unexpected change: Haply thou think’st’t will never be begun. Or tliat't has come, and been, and passed away; Yet turn to other none,. Turn not, oh, turn not thou! But listen, listen, listen,—lf haply Im heard it may: ( Listen, listen, listen,—l» it not Boumttt® now? —X EL OkafiiK