LONDON CHAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12213, 7 March 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON CHAT.

[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

London, January 23. Last Tuesday afternoon the Duke and Duchess of Orleans were received at Buckingham Palace by the King and Queen. The announcement was made by the Court Circular in the following form : " Their Majesties re- - ceived their .Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Orleans this afternoon, who were attended by Mile, de Villeheuve Barbemont . and the Due de Lurries." This visit is the sequel to the formal announcement made on September 12 last that " The King having informed the Duke of Orleans that the doors of England were re-opened to him. the Duke and Duchess of Orleans arrived from Hungary in London last evening." It is remarked that " their Majesties' gracioasness may thus be said to have ended the Willette incident, which brought the Duke of Orleans into such unpopularity in this country, and led to his expulsion from more than one West End club. The book of ;y.-oss caricatures on Great Britain, including a most offensive one of the late Queen, made by Willette, and issued as a special number of Le Eire, brought a special letter of approval from the duhe to the artist. In justice to Frenchmen generally, it may be added that His Royal Highness hardly enjoys more popularity in France.' It will be" remembered that the Due d'Orleuns was explicit in his selection of that particular caricature of Queen Victoria—-a most foul and brutal one— his enthusiastic approval as a dagger aimed straight at the heart of England. For what possible reasons our King and Queen can have climbed down and thus spontaneously extended the hand of forgiveness "and fellowship to this Freeh blackguard who so grossly insulted the King's own mother, as well as this nation, it is very hard indeed to conceive. No semblance of an adequate explanation has yet been given, and so once mote we all are forced into the disagreeable situation of recognising that there is an unexplained " something'' in the background, and that the French ducal cad must- have been able to brinj, to bear some particular special influence that we outsiders do not know. Assuredly the squeezure must have been very potent to make our Sovereign thus openly condone the filthy insult offered to his own England's great and still deeply-lamented Queen. But how and why " this is thus" we none of us really know.

It is worthy of notice that it is the same week which contains the second anniversary of Queen Victoria's death, which sees her insnlter welcomed and entertained by her own son. It was two years ago yesterday that Victoria the Great passed away. An impressive memorial service was held in the Frogmore Mausoleum. The name of the Due d'Orleans does not appear in the list of the mourners present. I wondei why? As lie went out of his way to insult the late Queen in her lifetime he might just as well have attended to insult her memory, trusting to being again forgiven by her son! Perhaps, however, he was wiser to stop away. Many people outside Court circles still bitterly resent his treatment of Queen Victoria, and it might not have been quite prudent to face them —unless under the protection of a very strong guard. There are plenty of loyal subjects of the late Queen who would be " only-too glad to get at him!" I daresay he is aware oi' that, and courage evidently is not his strong point. The Bourbons learn nothing!" Liverpool has tilled up the vacancy caused by the death of one of its Parliamentary representatives by returning Mr. Rutherford, a Conservative, by a majority of over two thousand. This lias been a very bitter pill to the disorganised Liberal" party, whose members were sanguine of victory. Mr. Holt, the defeated Radical candidate, had a strong letter of recommendation from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and it is beginning to be publicly recognised now that such a recommendation is invariably fatal. But poor Campbell-Bannerman still goes on recommending. A droll parody on one of Edward Lear's nonsense poems appeared in one of last evening's papers in this connection. It is entitled, " The Jumhlies," and runs as follows: — •

They went to sea in a sieve, they did, In a sieve they went to sea, Their flag was a relic of ages past. Which was nailed by the rusty nail to the mast, And # their captain was bold '* C-B." They cried " Home Rule" as they sailed away, But the Empire they left behind, And their sail a Newcastle programme spread Its Nineteenth Century rags o'erhead In a Twentieth Cent-ivy wind. Far and few, far and few

Are the lands where the Jumblies live, Their flag was green and their looks were ■ blue, And they went to sea in a sieve They sailed for the Ministerial shores, "Which only the brave may reach, Beit their charts were hopelessly out of date. And they feared to strike 011 a cleancd-up

slate. So they kept close' into the beach. The captain was perched 011 a rotting fence, And he merrily cried in turn, 3T6r his orders were all of the Jumblie sort. "Avast! port .starboard and starboard port!" And back her ahead astern!" - Far and few, far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live, Their flag was green and their looks were blue, And they went to sea in a sieve. And so they came to the Liverpool polls, And thev cried in a minor key : ' " Oh. men o' the port, prey give your vote To the Jumblie man in the patched-up coat, To the man who is quite at sea!' But the sieve it struck on the Rutherford Rock, . • ■ ... ■ And tliev all brought up with a jolt. And one of the Jumblies was washed away, And it's never they'll find, thought they ' search all day, . A trace of poor Jumblie Holt. Tar and few. far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live, yheir flag was green and their looks were blue, For they went to sea in a sieve. The fact is that iust as Charles 11. felt •onvinced that the English would never kill him to make his brother—afterwards James jl Kine so everybody feels that- whatever may be "the ' shortcomings of the _ Balfour Ministry it is unimaginable that Mr. Balfour should he be turned out to put in bir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. 'Ihe old saying about the frying-pan and the fire is striking! v relevant in this connection, lhe British Opposition is as badly in need of a leader, ps is the New Zealand Opposition. Lord Roseberv has been making some more of his delightful speeches, but delightful as they pre to read or hear they lead to nothing i' -we don't seem to get no forrader. He will never offer his leadership to the.party /hat betrayed him before, and indispensable though he 'is, there are too many dissentients for it to be easy for them to approach him, even if Campbell-Bannerinan were disposed to stand aside —which he isn't.: So the plaint still goes up, v Wanted, an Opposition leader," 'and in response " the cry is still lie don't come!" Notwithstanding all their protests and vows and threats and proclamations, the London Globe shareholders, with singular earnestness and almost with unanimity, absented themselves from a meetmg which was held to discuss the raising of a fund to prosecute in the affair of the London and Globe Corporation. _ , It appears that there has already been raised £1403 toward the cost of the prosecution, and the London Stock Exchange lias promised about £500. At a recent meeting Mr. Arnold White said it was freely alleged that the reason why a prosecution was not instituted against the directors of the London and Globe was that they were sheltering themselves behind great names. He was told that a Royal duke 'invested his money in the company. That was not a reason for refusing an investigation. He believed itwould be found that not any member ot ; the Royal family but the unworthy hangers-on of the Court would be proved guilty of having received money which they did not obtain honestly.' He proposed that a committee be appointed to decide what steps shou be taken to .raise the fund for the prosecution and to obtain • the best legal a vie . This was carried unanimously. Messrs J onn Flower, T. W. Leslie, G. Hanbury, J. Bowel R. C Parr, Arnold White, ~ and Arthui Hawkes were appointed as a committee to press forward the prosecution. ;■ Meanwhile some hundreds of civil actions are being brought against Mr. Whitaker Wright to recover damages on the score of wilful misiepresentation. ■ . ■■v.I.L ;