HOME GOSSIP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 4920, 24 November 1876, Page 3

HOME GOSSIP.

(Allas in the World.) The newspapers announce to ns that a wellknown member of the House of Commons and his charming and most popular wife sailed last week for New Tork,e» route for Philadelphia. But what the newspapers did not tell us, and what nevertheless is equally true, is that" the baby ” was most unwittingly shipped " free on board,” as one of the impedimenta ; inasmuch as Madame, naturally as an English gentlewoman, could nos get on without a personal attendant: and a " lady’s-maid ”is an impossibility on the other side of the Atlantic. Therefore the nurse was taken, for her sake, as admissible. This is a fact. It reminds me, though in a different sense, of what Charles Mathews phre delighted our fathers with fifty years ago in his At Some : “ This is a land of liberty. Every one may do as he likes with bis own. What will you give me for that ’ere d—d nigger ? ” Considering that we English advertise more largely than any other nation in the world, it is astonishing what little fertility of invention we show in our advertisements. I confess to finding the supplement of my Times at this time of year very enjoyable reading; that is to say, be it understood, after 1 have gone through all the leaders and the entire war news. But I never see anything new. The excitement caused by discovering that Hokanlogostikon refers to a pair of braces, or that lonkawlletigos is the name of a new string, soon dies away, and the rest of the advertisements are merely bald unromantic facts. They order these things better in San Francisco, where they preface the avowal of their Wares with a short anecdote. For example, I saw in a recent number of a ’Frisco paper the following " ‘ You must learn to be manly and resolute, my boy,’ said a father to bis son; ‘ you must learn to say no.’ Half an hour afterwards, when that father told his son to go and chop wood, the boy said No with an. amount of firmness that showed how he appreciated the parental teaching. He wouldn’t rave said No, however, if the old man had given him 25 cents, and told him to go and have a brandy-cocktail at So-and-so's noted bar,”

The world was a good deal younger when Charles Mackay began to sing ; and it seems many years since he filled a prominent plaoe in the literature of the day. He ia not dead, however, or even sleeping, but is hard at work upon a Gaelic dictionary, which is to prove that most languages, ancient and modem—including all those spoken in the ultimate stage of (he building of the Tower of Babel—find their roots in Gaelic. Dr Maokay’s poems and songs, published between the years 1810 and 1875, are now out of print, or live only in the music-sheets. They appeared successively iu 10 small volumes, and, in the intervals of his severer labour, the Doctor , is . collecting them; and they will shortly be published in a cheap form for the people, and in an idition de luxe, illustrated by Gilbert, for the library. The Cunard steamship Abyssinia, leaving Liverpool for New York on Saturday, (he 30th inst., will have on board her the bearer of a well-known name. Mr Martin Forquhar Tapper proceeds to America to give a series of readings from hie own works in the principal cities of the States. Mr Tapper’s writings are popular throughout the world, and the generous American audiences will be pleased to find themselves face to face with their author. Of his excellence as a poet there may be—there probably will be—muoh diversity of opinion ; hut all will unite in paying deference to the frank geniality and bonhomie which have enabled Mr Tupper to treat a vast amount of chaff—not always levelled in the beet taste —with dignity and good humour. Their name must be legion who will join in wishing the sage of Albury a pleasant voyage and a “ good time.” An unkind joke was played off the other day at the expense of a representative of the Daily Telegraph, who, contrary to the usual practice of the widely circulated, is positively writing his war correspondence “from the front” in Belgrade, and not in Fleet street. An Irishman, travelling for his health, met him at the Grown Hotel and told him he was on Tohernayeff’s staff, and that his name was Cercopbitheous Oallitriohus, and that they just had a smart brush with the enemy at Treron Sphenura, It is to be presumed the Irishman lied; for the first words are zoological Latin for green monkey, and (he second for wedge-tailed pigeon. It has been computed that, tradespeople apart, Mr Gladstone is the most extensive customer for halfpenny post-cards the Post Office possesses. If the right honourable gentleman could only realise the amount of heart-burning and indignation this habit engenders in the minds of his correspondents, he would probably employ a secretary, and use notepaper, envelopes, and penny stamps He might plead an illustrious example for the apparent penury of his stationery arrangements. Pope, it is well known, was much more careful of his paper than he was of his spite. This habit was so notorious that Swift calls him “ Paper-sparing Pope.” Dr Percy, the Bishop of Droraore, preserved—and it is probably in existence now—a slip of paper "no larger than a common message card,” as Boswell contemptuously describes .it, on which was written a note to Richardson, bringing under his notice Dr Johnson’s "London.” If Pope were alive now he would be a great patron of the postcard. But it might be worth Mr Gladstone’s consideration whether even he can afford to have post-cards under his signature read out to public meetings. The class of people with whom he corresponds through this cheap and convenient medium is the very one who moat feel the implied slight. Mr Gladstone might, if he pleased, write on a post-card to Karl Granville or Mr Bright without- fear of giving offence; whereas the well-meant post-card is a deadly insult in the eyes of the vain busy-bodies accustomed to " draw” the ex-Premier on political questions. Perhaps the best way out of the difficulty would be for Mr Gladstone to reduce his correspondence by one-haif, and put two halfpenny stamps on his letters.

After an absence of some years from London, Mr Barry Sullivan is to re-appsar as Richard 111. at Drury Lane. Mr Barry Sullivan is a good actor of the old school, vigorous, and alert, well versed in stage traditions and expedients, and skilled in the elocutionary system that delights in deep base notes of stomachic quality. Ho is assured of a cordial reception from his numerous admirers; but I do wish he would appear as Shakespeare’s Richard rather thau as Cibber’s. It is really high time that Cibber’s pasticcio was sent the way of Nahum Tate’s " King Lear,” Davenant’s “ Macbeth,’’ Dryden’s “ Tempest, and various other shameful manglings of the poet. I shall he told, of course, that Garrick and Henderson, Keen and Kemble, Cooke and Macready, all found Cibber’s Richard good enough for them ; but I find no satisfaotion m that argument. Cibber may be credited with the capital claptraps, “ So muoh for Buckingham!” and “ Richard’s himself again!” and with many other startling lines of his own invention. But his version otherwise is but a cento of passages from “ Richard It,” from the seoond part of "Henry IV.,”f«om“ Henry Y., the three parts of " Henry V 1.,” And from the original "Eiohard HI-,’’ with some borrowing from Caryl’s old play of the “English Princess. or the Death of Richard 111/ - The speeches of Henry V-, delivered at the Queen s Theatre in the play to which they legitimately belong, will be presently heard at Drury Lane from the lips of “ usurping Richard m the adaptation of Cibber! Surely, m these times, when so much reverence for Shakespeare is professed, bis integrity should he respectedin Drury Lane Theatre. I regret that the management has let slip a opportunity With the exception of two performances at Covent Garden in 1821, and a careful revival of the tragedy ia 1848, during Mr Phelps tenancy of Sadler's Wells, the “perfect Richard” of Shakespeare has not been seen upon the stage since the re-opening of the theatres in 1660.