LONDON SOCIETT GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8035, 24 August 1887, Page 6

LONDON SOCIETT GOSSIP.

Thk London correspondent of the Melbourne Argas contributes to that journal a readable letter dealing with the social gossip of the English metropolis. We extract the following paragraphs : — The honours and decorations given away on the occasion of the Jubilee were unexpectedly few, and the selection of recipients was astounding for its lack of reason and imagination. An absolutely obscure Scotch peer (Lord Strathmore) and an absolutely obsoure Irish peer (Lord Gal way) were given English peerages. An English baron (Londesborough), who is more ojf a notoriety than a celebrity, is made an earl. It was in his home at Scarborough that the Prince of Wale* caught typhoid fever 16 years ago. He is * wealthy man, and is well known as a driver of a four-in-hand and a first-nighter ; and by his feverish pursuit of acquaintanceship amongst the small fry of the dramatic world. Sir John St. Aubyn, a silent member, of old family, Sir William Armstrong, thegnnmakor, and a Mr. Fellows, whose eon married Lord Randolph's sister, get baronies, as do also Mr. Solater-Bootb, Sir James M'Garel Hogg, and Mr. Henry Eaton, of Coventry. It was of Mr. Sclater-Booth that Lord Randolph once said in debate that he observed that political mediocrities generally boasted of "double barrelled name?." Sir James McGarel Hogg is th« eldest son of a poor Ulster boy, educated by a benevolent widow and sent; early to Calcutta, where he amassed a great fortune at the bar, and coming home became a director of the Kast ludia Company, and was twice its chairman. The present baronet's paternal wealth has been vastly increased by a bequest from an old Mr. M'Garel, who at an advanced age married Sir James's youthful sister. The marriage caused a sensation at the time, as the crowd expressed its indignation at this marriage of May and December with such violence as almost to constitute a riot. Sir James is chairman of the Mettopolitan Board of Works. Mr. Henry Katun's peerage caused a small sensation ia its way, as, from the manner in which the Cockney newsboys shouted it, the great majority of Londoners were under the impression that Lord Salisbury had become lunatic aud conferred a peerage on Mi. Henni-ker-Heaton ! Mr. Eaton's or " Heaton's" real claim to a peerage is that when the affairs of the Duke and Duchess of Teck oatre to a crisis four years ago, he stepped into the broach and gave thumping prices for some of their pictures. Ho is a well-known figure in the London streets, and he drives one of the beat-appointed coaches in London, wearing the glossiost of hats, into the underbrim of which an eyeglass is screwed. Of the thirteen baronets the only ono who is widely known is Sir Algernon Bortnwick, M.P., the proprietor and director of the Morning Post. lie is himself a clever speaker and writer, and has au immense knowledge of foreign politics, but it is his wife who has made his position in the world for him. She is a niece of the statesman Lord Clarendon, a step-daughter of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a siater in-law of Sir William Harcourt, and a sister of Sir T. V. Lister, the Under Secretary at tho Foreign Office. She is one of the busiest and most euergetic women in London society, and has a house in Piccadilly of great splendour, where she organiiea parties to which all the great ones of the hour are glad to go. A few years ago Sir Algernon Borthwick reduced his paper from 3d to Id, and the effect was to double his fortane. It is the stupidest paper, politically, in London, but it has the monopoly of a certain class of "attenuated personalities " relating to the aristocracy, and when the anobocracy found that it could get this for a penny, I regret to say that about 100,000 of them discarded the superblymansged Standard for Sir Algernon Borthwick's newsless sheet.

Patti at last begins to show her years in her face. For many yearn she warded off the ravages of Time by avoiding the use of water on her akin, cleaning her face exclusively with cold cream, buc this expedient has at length tailed, and the lines of middle age have developed suddenly, and are as marked as if they had never been checked. Last year she completed her happiness by regularly marrying Monsieur Nicohni.and her doinp so, aud the fact of her having derived happiness therefrom, constitute striking evidence of the natural goodness and unselfishness of woman , ! obaracter. He is the son of an innkeeper at Dinan, in Brittany, named Nicolas, and his conversation and carriage befit his origin. He is an ignorant boor of the first order, whose only suoject of conversation is cooking, and whose one preoccupation during social meals is to confine the gastric imprudences of " Mignon" within due limits. While he is being talked to by his neighbour, his eye is steadily fixed on bia wite, and if he sees her inclined to accept any dish which he thinks bad for her, he utters a sharp "Mignon 1" and, holding up his finger, says aloud in French, " Let it be, Mignon. You will naffer horribly if you eat of it. Wait for the chicken cutlets. Those you can digest. Avoid peas, my child, above all things," She always obeys him like a child, and never stems to resenj( the ridicule and humiliation of bis petty interference. Knowing him by experience to be but a clown and a bore, she would, had she been a less good woman, have refused to com* plete her unioD with him, and have sought another marriage. But this her conscience was too tender to tolerate. She had never really been the wife of the wretched Marquis de Caux. fine regarded herself as having from the first definite y taken Jsicniini for her lord and master, and the thought never entered her head of backing out of the arrangement beoauee he was lees than the ideal which she had conceived of him when ahe first gave him her heart and herself.