CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIII, Issue 13777, 16 June 1905, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE KING’S 'Double.

“Doubles” hare engaged the attention of the public fairly fre-

quently during the last year or so, both in real life and in such works of fiction as “ The Prisoner of Zenda,” and “John Chilcote, M.F.” Even the King has his double, a wellknown Londoner, whoso personal resemblance to bis Majesty is most striking. Mr H. W. Lucy tells us that this similarity “has been a matter of occasionally embarrassing remark for years, dating back to the period when his Majesty was still Prince of Wales, and with advancing years the resemblance alike in face and figure, far exceeding in particularity that established in the recent notorious case, has been maintained.” Last year, at Ostend, an observant local journalist familiar with the face of the King, passed the Londoner in the street, with the result that there appeared at once in print a circumstantial account of a Royal visit incognito. According to Mr Lucy, a similar incident occurred in Paris just prior to the recent visit of the King to that city. The King’s double arrived in Paris, intending to remain for a week, hut straightway found himself the object of such irritating attention that he returned to England on the following day. “ The fact that King Edward was incognito,” says Mr Lucy,,: “added to the pressure of the situation. Too polite tc/ interfere with his Majesty’s expressed desire to maintain his privacy, they did not openly cheer the hapless city man as he took his walks abroad. But he was painfully conscious of a crowd dogging his footsteps, of passers-by stepping aside and baring their heads as he passed.” The real King Edward, by the way, afforded the Paris journals material for a “sensation” by the fact that though ho remained in conversation with M. Delcasse for an hour before lunch, ho could spare the Gorman Ambassador only twenty minutes after lunch. So far as France is concerned, the King’s visit certainly had no political significance, but Continental journalists find it bard to understand the constitutional position of the British King.

Bath in its prime, in the days, that is, when

Beau Nash ruled its society, is described by a writer in “Blackwood’s Magazine.” Nash, we are told, saw to it that during the season in Bath every hour of the day had its assigned duty. The fashionable crowd, thus saved the fatigue of thinking for itself, obeyed the programme implicitly, and bathed and breakfasted and promenaded and dined and danced and gamed, all in public, in accordance with Nash’s mandates. If anyone in his presence ventured on too free a compliment to one of the Naicjds of the bath ho was liable to immediate immersion. The ladies, .arrayed in brown linen costumes and chip hats, were carried to the bath in sedans, “hermetically closed,” said a. French cynic, “ when the occupants were old, ugly, or jjrudish, and artistically penetrable when they were finely formed.” And each lady had a little floating dish containing handkerchief, nosegay, snuffbox and patches. After the bathing, which was mixed and musical, the “ patients ” were carried home. The staircases of the new houses wore so constructed that chairs might bo token direct to .’the bedrooms. The ladies next appeared at the 'Pump-room, indulged in hot water and scandal. Then followed breakfast, service in the Abbey till twelve, promenade, dinner, Pumproom, promenade, tea in the Assemblyroom, a ball, or the theatre, or the gaming-table. Nash used to gamble heavily himself, as all society folk gambled, but it is to bo said for him that ho endeavoured to dissuade young people from following Jus example. He was the life and soul of the famous society resort in the early half of the eighteenth century. Honours were heaped upon him. His full-length nor-

trait was hung between the busts of Pope and Newton, inspiring Chesterfield's well-known epigram:— “ Tho picture placed tlio busts between Gives Eo.tirs its full strength; ■Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length.” In old ago, Nash was pensioned by the city, and in death it gave him a splendid funeral, but its glory really departed with him.

THE EXD OF THE ACTOCP.ACT.

, A Russian writer in the “ National Review,” ’. under the title of “ The

End of the Autocracy, contributes a startling picture of Russia and its ruler at the present moment. He foresees in the painfully near future a terrible destiny for Russia. Her ruler ho paints as an epileptic, deserted by all to whom he has hitherto looked for support, now under the domination of feminine influences thinly veiled as the “Boudoir Council.” He is vacillating, obstinate, - weak-willed, uncertain, indeterminate and blind to all counsels. A private citizen who would mismanage his paternal estate as Niekolai Alexandrovitch. misrules his empire, would, according to the writer, be temporarily deprived of the control of his property, treated a-s a minor) and placed under tutelage. A vast concourse of human beings are at his mercy. His whim turns hundreds of thousands of citizens into orphans, beggars and corpses. The living vainly mourn for the dead and murmur at their own lot, all the outcome of a whim, the passing whim, of a creature who himself needs guidance and guardianship. But the soulcrippled prince by whoso order hundreds of thousands- are crushed, impoverished, brutalised, i and killed is inviolable. Every expedient that human ingenuity, chastened by latterday ethics, could devise has been tried and tried in vaiu. -His Ministers have warned him, Grand Dukes have left him, his own mother and his wife’s sister have dissociated themselves from him, and some of them ask the world to take note that they have washed their hands of the autocrat, hoping to benefit the dynasty. After each massacre of his loyal people, misnamed a battle, he inflates his chest and tells the world that he is undaunted still, and will carry on the fearful struggle to the end, bravely sacrificing ever more blood and ever more money. “Our Czar,” the writer concludes, “is one of those typical rulers sent in periods of national transition to peoples foredoomed to be stung into pulling down the tottering fabric of the past. For many years'he was characterised by weakness of will, which is now brought into painful relief by a convulsive craving for strength. The ■ feebleness is evidenced in his chronic state, the fitful force in his transitory moods. Fitfulness is his substitute for steadiness, impulse for will, and mood for character. He is constant only in his inconstancy. Our whole empire is come to a deadlock.” '