LONDON TABLE TALK.

Evening Star, Issue 8810, 27 April 1892, Page 3

LONDON TABLE TALK.

(From Oub Special Correspondent.J

London, March 4. MISS CLODOU. On Saturday last one of the ablest and most remarkable of living Englishwomen passed peacefully away. This was Miss Clough, the poet’s sister, and the principal founder and manufacturer Newnham College, Cambridge. Miss Clough had been a successful schoolmistress all her life, but it was not till IST I her great opportunity came. Then, at the invitation of Professor Lilly, she took charge, at Cambridge, of five girl students. From this humble origin sprang Newnham College, the success of which has been remarkable. In 1875 Newnham Hall was built. In 1880 another hall and more rooms were called for, and in 1888 the college blossomed into the present magnificent block of buildings. In 1888 amongst the recipients of honorary degrees who visited Newnham were the Prime Minister and many other great men, including Mr Balfour, who has from the first been a tower of Strength to the Ladies’ College. What Miss Clough’s work was between 1871 and 1880 only those who can remember the prejudices which existed, and, to a much less extent, still exist against the higher education of women in the upper and middle classes, will be able to realise. Almost every student had to be captured at the point of the sword. Paterfamilias either disliked or distrusted or disbelieved in his daughter going to Newnham. “If you must read Latin and Greek, and fash your head with mathematics, do it at home,” he would say; or “A girl’s place is with her mother”; or “You’d be better employed learning to cook”; or “I cant hrre my daughter amongst a lot of rowdy college boys at Cambridge.” These, and fifty other similar objections had to be combated and overcome somehow. “ I’m afraid I shall be obliged to give np all hopes of joining yon,” the would-be oollegian used to say to Miss Clough, tearfully. “Neither mother nor father will hear of it.” „ ... “Bring your dear father here, Mi?s Clough invariably replied, “end I'll see if I can’t make him think differently. She usually succeeded. The man who entered her drawing room was lost. He inevitably partially capitulated before leaving. Miss Clough was, after a time, assisted by Mias Gladstone (the G.O.M.’s only unmarried daughter) and Miss Stephen (a daughter of the judge and brother of J.K.S.), but the general management was always hers, and hers alone. Simple and unpretending in manner, though perfectly dignified, she cared little for dress, and would have struck one as ordinary looking but for her masses of snow white hair and the keenness and brightness of her eyes, which few things escaped. Although exceptionally well educated. Miss Clough shone less as a teacher than as organiser, administrator, and diplomatist. She never made a fuss. She never seemed scheming or planning. But her way was generally the way taken. Recalling & discussion with the principal of Newnham, a Liverpool professor once observed ; “ We appeared to be confiding our views to each other, but I discovered on thinking the conversation over that _ whilst Miss Clough had turned my mind inside pat 1 really knew nothing of hers.” During the early days of Newnham, when every shaft which academic Toryism, masculine ridicule, and undergraduate wit and mischief could Invent was launched against the Ladies’ College, Miss Clough’s dimml-

tie* were each u only surpassing tact and ■kill could have lumonnted. “Many countries," writes a biographer, " have been governed with leu talent and diplomacy and less strength o! mind and character than Miu Clough displayed in the management of Newnham. Yet she was adored by her ails, and retained their friendship to the , whatever their lot in life might bo.” She has lived to see her pet hobby a great and splendid Institution, respected and admired by educated society in all parts of the world. It has turned out a Senior Wrangler and Senior Classic, and left its elder sister Qlrton far behind. The work is the work of but twenty-one years, yet it is complete, and may, in fact, be said to have " come of age,” and to be fit to look after itself. This, no doubt, the grand old lady felt, and when at length her energies faded, and, tended by loving hands, she glided slowly towards the Unknown, she did so perfectly restfully and happily. Anne Clough’s life was complete. Like the great Cardinal, she died in sleep.

LITERARY NOTES. There is, it seems, even a more tragic story than I thought connected with Valentine Darrant, the luckless author of the abortive ‘Cbeveley’ novels, who died the other day. Darrant was a baker’s son. and entirely self-educated. A wealthy dabbler in letters "discovered” him, and resolved that hia ahould be the honor and glory 0 exploiting this second Scott or Bnlver. The patron interested Messrs Blackwood i his protege, and they evolved t ®B ßth ®j r scheme of the ‘Cheveley’ novels. Blackwood’s judgment is generally » 0 «“^' having a few years previously somewhat underrated George Eliot, the firm were now in the mood to over-rate a promising new hand. Besides, 'A Modern Minister was undeniably clever. Its start would have turned the heads of stronger men than Darrant, Tho shilling part sold la tens of thousands, and the critics promptly recognised “the familiar hand of Bulwer Lytton." Durranta collapse was almost as sadden and startling as his success, or rather hia pseudo-success. The patron’s eyes were not, however, fully opened till ‘A Modern Minister’ appeared complete. Then the good man jumped to extremes, and from recognising in Darrant a geniur, condemned him as an impostor, whose flashy, superficial cleverness had taken him in. Darrant was always very poor, and for years starved in a garret in London. His patron never took much interest in the personal well-being of "my discovery.” On the second-hand book stall you may one day come across either ‘ Souls and Cities,’ ‘His Child Friend,’ or ‘A Modern Minister.' If you do, spend a shilling thereon. In the light of this unfortunate man’s career you will find ‘ A Modern Minister ’ at least worth glancing through. ‘The Venetians’ is the title of Miss firaddon’s fifty-second (or can It bo third) novel now running through the Sheffield ‘Telegraph’—quite the moat popular of provincial weeklies, Messrs Macmillan announce ‘The Three Fates,’ by Marion Crawford; Mrs Oliphant’s ‘Marriage of Elinor’; and ‘The Story of Dick,’ by Major Parry—all for immediate publication in England, America, and Australia.

The circulation of the ‘Strand’magazine has touched 275,000. The second number of ‘ The Idler ’ is (putting smart names out of the question)—an improvement on No. 1, but iu every way it still falls far short of Mr Newnes's monthly. The ‘ Search Light’—Arthur Pearson’s new threepenny monthly—pretends to be nothing more than a rough coleotion of Ametiom and Continental clippings, adorned with a few bought blocks, Cover, paper, printing, ami illustrations are all of the commonest description, I shouldn’t have said the venture had much chanco of success, but Mr Pearson’s head happens to be screwed on exceptionally straight, and it is unlikely he has made a mistake. The public he caters for are the mill hands of the north, and in the matter of illustrations no doubt they want size and not quality or quantity. The new humorists, Barry Pain and Zangwill, have both books well forward. Mr Zangwill’s is to be called ‘Children of Ghetto,’ and will deal with Jewish life and character.

A committee appointed by the French Government to apportion the proceeds of the tax on betting at horse races (pari mutuel) have decided to forward L 4.000 to the French Hospital at Constantinople, and to contribute L 3.000 to the foundation of a hospital iu Savoy to commemorate the annexation of that country to France. The proceeds of the 2 per cent, tax sweepstakes for charitable purposes, which was created last Juue, amount already to LBO 000. Out of this the Committee will pay L 14.000 to different charitable foundations iu Paris. Compressed air is being very largely used iu Paris, instead of electricity or steam, to do a great deal of work. A Dublin “shop-lifter,” sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, confessed to having spent eighteen years out of the thirtythree of his life in prison,