LONDON GOSSIP.

Evening Star, Issue 9472, 17 August 1894, Page 3

LONDON GOSSIP.

[From Our Special Correspondent.]

London;, June 30.

The next Lyceum production will be ‘ King Arthur,’ by the late Mr Wills, with additions by Comyna Carr. Mr Vanderfelt has been engaged to succeed Terriss and to play Lancelot. The career of ‘ A Society Butterfly ’ at the Opera Comique closed abruptly on Friday owing to the absence of Mrs Langtry from the cast. On dit, the Lily struck for wages. The Madame Alboni who died in Paris last Sunday at the age of seventy-one was a famous contralto vocalist, and must not be confused with Madame Albani (Mrs Ernest dye), the soprano prima donna. Madame Alboni belonged to tl e Mario-Grisi period of Italian opera, and was known as the “ elephant with a nightingale in her throat,” because of her extraordinary obesity. She was a pupil of Rossini’s, and achieved her greatest success in his * Semiramide,’ Pacqiqi’a ‘ Sapho,’ and more especially in oratorio. Mr Chorley describes her voice as a rich, pure, real contralto of two octaves—from G to G —as sweet as .honey, but not intensely expressive, and with that tremulous quality which reminds fanciful spectators of the quiver of the air of a calm summer noon.” Madame Alboni married the Marquis Pepolt in 1853, and ten years later retired into private life. She made one reappearance in England afterwards. This was in 1871, when on the occasion of the production of Rossini’s * Messc Solonelle ’ at St. James’s Hall she sang the contralto part. Uei bulk at that time was phenomenal, and her voice seemed lost in fat. Madame’s first husband died about this time, and in 1877 she married Major Zeigler. Till a year ago the old lady’s spirits were excellent. She stood E’ jother to numberless women singers, e. Krauss and Madame Nevada being her special proteges, and, her charities were boundless. She had been ill some months.

The new piece ‘Shall Wc Forgive Her,’ produced at the Adelphi with every symptom of success last week, is what up-to-date folks like to call a problem play. Not that you need suppose there is anything new in it. The “ her ”is our old friend the New Magdalen alias Tess of the D’Urbervilles alias “ the girl who didn’t know, you know.” She tripped a bit with a gentleman {'n Queensland —not her fault, of course—iut still a faux pas. Now she is married to a good man at Home, who loves her, and whom she loves. The only cross is Joanna, her husband’s old housekeeper, who through Song years has angled for his hand and heart. Toauna hates her mistress, and of course it is evident to the meanest capacity she will presently find out her secret. For a year it is successfully kept; The parson knows it, but his lips are scaled. The husband’s cousin knows it, but gratitude keeps him silent, for she has saved-his life. But presently comes the paramor from Queensland, intent on blackmail. Joanna overhears all, and — blabs. The shock—a good old melodramatic shock—sends the engraver blind, and, clinging to the grisly but virtuous Joanna, he drives the heroine and her chee-ild from home. Nevertheless, ’tis the erring wife who, by vague literary labors, keeps the wolf from the door and secures the services of the eminent oculist, who restores the engraver’s sight. In the end, of course, pardon and reconciliation eventuate, and everyone is happy bar Joanna.

barrie’s new play. It is a long time since anything so utterly unconventional has been seen upon the English stage as Mr J. M. Barrie’s new play ‘ The Professor’s Love Story.’ When I speak of it as “new,” I mean new to England. Mr E. S. Willard has already increased his popularity and the size of his money-bags with the little Scotchman’s idyll in America. We of the metropolis saw the piece for the first time last Monday night at the Comedy. According to the notions of the accepted authorities Barrie’s play is perhaps no play at all. The author has certainly avoided all that we recognise as “plot,” “situation,” and “curtain,” whilst the interest of the piece is split up by subordinate love stories of quite unequal class. At times during the three acts come flashes of positive genius in construction, touches of refined and subtle comedy, and gems of dialogue. There are also moments of dulness which suggest that the author found his material a trifle too slender to strain out into three acts. However, the story’s the thing, and here it is. The main story deals with Professor Tom Goodwillie, an old-young man of forty, whose all-absorbing studies have robbed him of the very beginnings of his youth. At the rise of the curtain something is the matter with the professor. His old college chum, Dr Cosens, fails to diagnose his case, and even Effie Proctor, the professor’s housekeeper, cannot “mak’ oot what’s the matter with him.” The professor blunders childishly in the MS. of his magnum opus, his neckerchief is tied under his ear, and the very children in the streets make mock 'of his ungainly ways. He takes his nightly pills by dozen?, during the- day, tries to write with his drinking, water and all but drinks the ink. Something very serious is evidently wrong with the professor, but with the return of his dainty lady secretary, Lucy White, who had been with him nearly a month, a telltale change comes over Goodwillie. He is at once himself again, and, as she sits awaiting his dictation, a blond, expansive smile takes the place of the worried look he has been wearing. Dr Cosens smells the rat, and after cogitation diagnoses the complaint thus: “Tom, you’re in love.” “Nonsense!” says the startled professor, “why, who is the woman?” “You must find that out.” “I’ll ask Miss White!” And to escape from falling a prey to some unknown female the dear old noodle trips away to Scotland, taking his secretary along with him. There is, however, another woman in the case. The Dowager Lady Gilding would like to be Mrs Professor, and she follows him across the border. In a cornfield at Tullochmain we find the whole party playing at harvesting—Sir George Gilding and his wife, whose only aim is to bring the dowager and the professor together so that they may handle £SOO a year—the professor, his lady secretary, the doctor, and Goodwillie’s sister Agues, a hard old maid. This worthy woman soon sees the direction of her brother’s fancy. She reads Lucy a lesson on her presumption, and her insulting suggestions drive that young lady to rebellion and revenge. The silly little dowager, blind utterly to (he situation, tries to enlist Lucy’s aid io her plan of campaign

against the professor. Lucy artfully gets her scheme from hor. The dowager proposes to sham a fainting fit on a wheatsheaf, hoping, of course, that the professor will discover and avow his love for her when he sees her in that unconscious condition. Lucy, however, plays the game for herself whilst her rival goes off for a rug. The professor finds his secretary apparently unconscious, takes her tenderly m his arms towards the river, and cn route discovers, what everybody else has known all along, that he is in lovo with her. The last act is a protracted game of cross-purposes. Lucy, ashamed of her devices, decides to return to London. Tho poor professor is diffident, and metaphorically, kicks himself for his presumption. All seems likely to end in a j'asco. But the grim old-maid sister is, by ’the opportune discovery of a letter which missed her, reminded of her lost lover of twenty years ago, and her heart goes out to the unhappy couple. She puts matters right, and a shadow pantomime on the cottage window-blind shows us the rejuvenated professor taking his first kisses, whilst the chagrined dowager sits on the garden seat below.

On Monday Mr Willard gave a delightful representation of the love-lorn Goodwillie, and Miss Bessie Hatton as Lucy White was charmingly true to nature as his wayward, lovable sweetheart. The piece was splendidly received—as, indeed, it deserved to be. Doubtless ‘ The Professor’s Love Story ’ will find its way out to the Antipodes. lam sure you would appreciate the piece.

LITERARY NOTES. .Miss Braddon’s new novel, * Thou Art the Man,’ is neither better nor worse than any of her last half • dozen semi-failures. It seems a pity such an experienced and (when she chooses) Expert workman should be content to produce such indifferent stuff. Tho plot of this story has, of course, to do with a murder. Bertram .Mountford has the seeds of homicidal epilepsy in his blood, and is told, it may break out at any moment. Therefore , when . after a mysterious fit he finds himself lying in a forest beside the dead body of his liost’s adopted daughter, Marie Arnold, and notes that his hands are red with her blood, he not unnaturally concludes the worst has befallen him. In consequence Mountford feebly allows himself to be locked up as a madman in a country vicarage for ten years, his gaoler, needless to say, being the real criminal. The reader can hardly fail to “ spot ” the latter instantly, though Miss Braddon tries heroically to lead us off on false scents. I must confess that when I found lief dwelling insistently on the fidelity of the old bailiff Orlebar I was almost inclined—he being the unlikeliest person in the book to commit murder—to suspect him instead of the obviously wicked major. The new or Edinburgh edition of Stevenson’s works was more than subscribed as soon as Chattos issued the circular. It is intended to issue them in crimson cloth, with gilt top and paper title. The volumes will be printed in Constable’s best style— i.e. , like Henley’s ‘ Lyra Heroica’ and Kipling’s ‘Barrack Koom Ballads.’

If any proof were wanting that the two remarkable volumes of beau-moiule gossip (‘An Englishman in Paris’ and ‘My Parisian Note Book ’) which M.. Albert Yandam sponsored were not his own work, it would be found in the novel called ‘ The Mystery of the Patrician Club ’ the ‘ Globe ’ correspondent has just brought out. This book unquestionably is pure Yandam—at least us much of it as Boisgobey and Gaboriau have not inspired, M. Yandam seems to have dilligently studied the detective romances of these worthies. But, nevertheless, he is no hand a murder mystery. Wc haven’t read twenty pages of his story before we know why the waiter at the Patrician Club was made away with and who committed the crime. Another Paris correspondent, Mr H. F. Woods, of the ‘Chronicle,’ has written much better yarns of this description. ‘ The Passenger from Scotland Yard ’ was really good of its kind. You should, however, put ‘The Mystery of the Patrician Club’ on your library list, if only to contrast its style with that of ‘ The Englishman in Paris.’ Far the best of the recent Pseudonyms is ‘The Shen’s Pigtail and Other Cues of Auglo-Chiua Life,’ by “Mr M,” Not only are the scenes and stories fresh, giving us glimpses of a practically unknown country, but “ Mr M.” has perception, humor, a rough sort of pathos, and a very respectable style of his own. The booklet, in short, is well worth eighteenpence. Lady Jeune’s volume of essays will be entitled ‘Lesser Questions,’ and is tots published presently by Remington and Co. Be sure and note Norman Gale’s admirable ‘Cricket Precepts of Baloo’ in the ‘Pali Mall Budget ’of the 21st. It is the best parody on Kipling yet attempted, and excellent also from the cricketer’s point of view.

The new story by Mrs Annie Edwardes, which commences in ‘ Temple Bar’ for July, will be called ‘ The Adventuress,’ and run to about the same length as Miss Broughton’s ‘A Beginner.’ The latter is now in its fourth edition. * Oornhill’ for July has also a new serial, ‘A Fatal Reservation,’ and contains the lirst chapter of James Payn’s ‘Gleams of Memory.’ Mrs Oliphant’s 1 Was Lost and Is Found,’ which commenced in the June ‘ Blackwood,’ has for its heroine an old lady of sixty, and I expect will prove, like * Madonna Mary,’ an illustration of what maternal love will suffer for a beloved though worthless object. The subject is one this authoress often returns to, vide, ‘Madam,’ ‘A Rose in June,’ ‘A House Divided Against Itself,’ and several of her earlier works.

The ‘ Woman at Home ’ for July is a good number. I did not care for this magazine at first, but it has improved steadily, and nice women of all classes seem to like it. The July number contains an interesting illustrated article on the wonders of Welbeck Abbey, a story (complete) by Mrs Hungerford, a detective tale called ‘The Sacred Sapphire,’ and plenty of talk about dress, fashions, cookery, etc. Olive Schreiner, who is a capital talker, tells a wonderful story of a bright stone which was one of the favorite playthings of herself and brothers and sisters. It was about the size of a walnut, and flashed in such an odd way that they called it the “candle stone.” Not till she had quite grown up, and the candle stone had long been lost, did any of them realise that it was a diamond, doubtless of immense value. The Kimberley mines were in the unknown future, but this stone must have been washed down somehow from there to the Karoo.

‘ Cock Lane and Common Sense ’ is the title of Mr Andrew Lang’s " spook book,” of w'hich a most amusing review appears in Monday’s ‘ Westminster Gazette.’ I should like to reproduce the whole of it, but as you, Mr Editor, would probably consider that—to quote the writer’s favorite phrase—- “ rather steep,” the following excerpt must suffice. He says: There are several ways of approaching the consideration of the spook. There is the literary person’s way, regarding the spook simply as providing a certain amount of eerie “ copy.” There is the religious person’s way, which rather takes the form of refusing to approach it at all, because it is of the Devil, There is the solemn and scientific psychical researcher, who denies that it is devilish,' but sometimes makes it devilishly dull. Among respectful believers there is your sombre sort for whom the spook is a thing of deadly earnest, especially in the dark : and, on the other hand, there is Mr Stead, bouncing in among the properties of “ Borderland ” with the air of one who smacks the spook on the back and considers that no family should be without one. Then among sceptics there is Professor Huxley, who says he can do raps with his big toe, and declined the Dialectical Society’s invitation to help in investigating “communications ’ with the remark that he would as soon listen through a telephone to “the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest 'cathedral town.” Mr Andrew Lang’s position is none of these. It is avowedly that of “a bellettristic trifler,” as Matthew Arnold once called himself. It is “historical, anthropological, and antiquarian.” We should say that tho Lang of ‘ Cook Lane and Common Sense,’ as he characteristically miscalls his spook book, is a mixture of the Lang who writes (or used at odd times to write) serious poetry and the Lang of ‘Custom and' Myth.’ Ho trifles bellottristically around ghosts, hallucinations, witch-baitings, crystalgazing, and the relation of ghosts to religion and to the law; treats the scientific sceptics to some rather pietty Socratic dialectic and Socratio irony; and concludes—what? Broadly, that there is a deal of queer matter worth looking into. Of the implied alternatives of the title, he is decidedly more for “ Cock Lane ” than for “ Common Sense.” He almost champions the seceßtric spook associated with “Scratching

Fanny in the famous Lane, as against the facile sneers of a Dr Johnson and a Walpole; while Common Sense is throughout this volume a thing which Delivers brawling ,iudgmonts all day long On alt things unashamed. Mr Aubrey Beardsley, whose weird and grotesque posters and illustrations represent the latest development of fin de »kch art, is a shadowy young man with a flabby manner. Oscar Wilde describes him as “a silver hatchet with green hair,” and my impression is he tries to live up to this lucid dcscriptiou.

Mrs Frank Leslie, whoso unfortunate marriage with the “ too Bohemian ” Willie Wilde is said to have completely broken her health and spirits, has just sold tho American papers and magazines she managed so successfully to a company for £BO,OOO. Everybody was sorry for this capable lady during the season she spent in London. Dressed fittingly, the clever business woman would have made many nice friends, but she went in for rouge and juvenility, and finally two very queer customers got hold of her. Mr Willie Wilde, “ such a naughty man, but so interesting,” was one, and the Marquis De Leuville the other. The Marquis all but captured the prey—in fact, Mrs Leslie had actually arranged to marry him, when ‘‘something awkward” leaked out. She left for America, and Willie Wilde followed and married her. He was going to reform, of course, but found American drinks too alluring to resist, and, after a miserable eighteen months, Mrs Leslie divorced him.