A Strange Career.

Evening Star, Issue 7337, 8 October 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Strange Career.

During the week (writes the London correspondent of the ' Argus,' in a letter dated August 12) a man has died by a pistol accident who was the object of much reflected notoriety and amused pity on the part of society. I speak of Mr Augustus Thistlethwayte, of Grosvenor Square, husband of "Laura, daughter of the late Captain Bell, of Ireland," as she is described in the obituary notices. The beauty of "Laura Bell" was for Borne few years the theme of London in the last generation. The • Morning Post' gives the date of her marriage with the wealthy and wellborn Augustus Thistlethwayte as 1852; but, although she certainly disappeared from public view in that year, there is good ground for saying that she did not even make her husband's acquaintance until after Inkerman, when he went to announce to her the death of his brother, with whom she had been acquainted. In 1863 Mrs Thistlethwayte, still in the zenith of her marvellous beauty, astonished London by appearing as a religious preacher. The memory of her splendor and her adventures were then fresh in the public mind, and her sermons, which were extremely eloquent, were attended by thousands, including many noble lords who had formerly counted themselves among her admirers. "Orators, philosophers, and statesmen have hung upon my eloquence, and now I will be eloquent for Jesus," she exclaimed on one occasion whilst passing to her rostrum. For a few years she became more and more absorbed in religion, and joined one of the divisions of the Plymouth Brethren which owned Lord Congleton as its apostle. The story of her career and her repentance was devoured with avidity by her co-religionists ; but in time she took to embroidering her narrative in order to sustain the interest; and for telling some very harmless romances about her origin and parentage she was deE rived of church membership, and driven ack into the world again, where, however, Bhe found a new and sufficiently consoling avocation in being the friend and constant entertainer of the most famous and brilliant men in England. For some years " Laura's" dinners in Grosvenor square were quite unrivalled. There might constantly be found Chief Justice Cockburn, Chief Baron FitzroyKelly, Abraham Hay ward. Sir Henry James, Mr Gladstone, Sir William Harcourfc, Herbert the artist (whose conversation is vastly superior to his paintings), and many others, who together made up as brilliant a band as has ever assembled together in London since the extinction of

Holland House. All these men, however, were worldings save Mr Gladstone, many of them being unfettered by domestic ties; but Mr Gladstone was both a family man and a noted pietist. And it was his constant presence in Grosvenor Square, and unfeigned admiration for the talents of the hostess, which seemed to London to constitute the moat piquant feature of the society. Laura had taught her husband to preach during the years that she preached herself, and very badly he used to preach; but he continued at the work long after she herself had been unwittingly forced into the position of a backslider. Indeed, on one occasion he was near meeting his death from exposure to the sun when bareheaded to a crowd of Sunday idlers in the park. In later years Mr Thistletbwayte quarrelled often and seriously with his wife, on account of the expensivencss of her dress and hospitalities. The disagreements became public owing to his resisting at law the claims of her tradesmen, and putting notices in the paper to cry down her credit at shops. The brilliant hospitalities at Grosvenor Square, therefore, became a thing of the past—and not only for this reason, but owing to the ravages of death among the habitues. Their Egeria, however, is still to be seen frequently at certain houses, and her presence seems to have a strange fascination for many of the spotless of her own sex. She is, of course, no longer beautiful, but an Irish brogue, which you could cut with a knife, still survives to attest hernatirnality.