A LONDON HOSTESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14235, 4 December 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

A LONDON HOSTESS.

I%, y ST HELIER'S RECOLLECTIONS OF PEOPLE AND EVENTS. SJL will hear it said that si book of miniscences must , be indiscreet, or writ--1 ill red rink, if it is to bo interesting. Sat is not so, for discretion may bo the ',„ art of autobiography. It all depr. upon the writer, what ho or she C to tell, and how it is told. There is triumphant proof of this conation in Lady St. Helier's " Memories f Fifty Years," which Mr. Edward Ar Hid 'publishes. It has no " "orrid reveSns," no "blazing indiscretions," and tit' is interesting from beginning to }-. That is because Lady St. Holier uVinuch to toll us, wi'iunit telling us 11 much, and because she tells it well, fv a q„iet, friendly way. as of somebody ' talking by the fireside. .Moreover, just as ,' fio od talk, there now and then comes the phrase yon read twice, for instance where she describes somebody as a, " sort 0 f whispering gallery." Our author has, as Mrs. Jeune, Lady Teline o nrl, when her husband became a !Lr Ladv St. Holier, long been a figure flight and loading" in London society. cL has known everybody worth knowing, 'been in touch with events in the making, I her story of it. all is informing and ereeable. A Sea forth Mackenzie herself, hi- mot her was a friend of Sir Wal,l Scott who railed her the "Chieftain's Daughter." Then her mother was a friend of the Duke of Wellington, which circumstance gives us an anecdote of the only meeting between him and his old adversary. Marshal Soult.

AUGHT TING !

It is a quaint little tale, so : "Wellington was travelling in Spain, and bv a curious coincidence he and Soult happened to be in the same town on tho same day. Soult. hearing that his great opponent was there and resting in his carriage in the heat of the day (probably asleep), with true French curiosity went quietly to have a peep at him. The duke slept "on unconsciously, but when telling the story, my mother said, he added with a Trim "smile, 'That, was the first time Soult had ever caught me napping !' "

When the Prince Imperial, slain by the Zulus, was brought home to be buried at Chislehurst, Lady St. Helier happened to be staying there :

" The sorrow of he French mourners was very deep and sincere, but the strongest feeiing at first was one of intense curiosity to know how the ill-fated boy had been whether in endeavouring to escape from his hard-hearted foes or in facing them boldly. It, wad very curious to witness the satisfaction with which, after seeing his body, they all embraced each other, exclaiming, II a ete frappe en face.' "

How do we. women and men, compare with our forebear? —say, are we as good looking? Lady St. Helier is old enough to be able to give us an answer : -

"If I were critical, I should say that women nowadays are prettier than their grandmothersstronger, better developed, better set-up, and certainly more independent and more self-reliant than they iwere forty years ago; but I do not think thai; the men are as handsome or physically as strong and as finely developed as their grandfathers."

English society and our social ways have changed greatly within her experience, and with her shrewd eye for the illuminating human circumstance, she says :

" The shortness and simplicity of even the best dinners nowadays has added to their pleasure, and the mere fact of the men coining up to the drawing-room so quickly after dinner is over makes the evening much more agreeable." NEW OARLYLE STOWES. The Carlyles Lady St. Helier knew, 'and her impressions confirm the pictures lof them which we get from their recently ipublished letters; that they were entirely i attached to each other, and yet got on ill. She was a highly-strung, nervous i woman;" he "adored her," but being i"a peasant in manner and character," he lacked the "little outward signs of tdevotion and affection" which are so much to a woman; and so went things wrong :

" I rem >rnber her once saying to me in a bitter way, ' My dear, whatever you do, never marry a philosopher;' and that was tho key to the enigmathe woman always hungering for proofs of the devotion in which the whole of her daily life was wanting."

"Lady St. Helier has an amusing storv of a tea-party given at the Deanery of Westminster i" Dean Stanley's day, so that Queen '. '.?ria might meet some of her distinguished subjects. Carly.' . was there, in good,humour, loquacious, communicative; really he did most of the talking, and "treated Her Majesy just like an ordinary mortal."

• ■" As she rose to leave and passed the remaining guests, who were making their obeisance, she turned to Mr. Browning, who had not been able to get a word in 'during the whole afternoon, and said : .'What an extraordinary man Mr. Carlyle is! I have never met him before. 1 Quite touching, in its way, is an incident which Lady St. Helier tells us of •the late Mr. John Walter, proprietor of the Times. ' He held the name of his great journal high—"he wanted nothing and would accept nothing." And yet there was one longing in his heart —he would just have liked, as a near neighlour of Queen Victoria at Windsor, to have had the honour of "a short audience" with her there. But when he spoke of this in a casual way to Lady Jeune (as she then was) it was as of something done with " only as an instance of some of the things people wish for in life and never attain." She put matters in train, and his wish would have been gratified, nut he died before there was the opportunity. It is a plain tale of the hills, that, GI.ADSTON'K AND " DIZZY." •ftNaturally Lady St. Helier has pages about the g>eat politicians whom she has ; teown and met. She liked " Dizzy" better than she liked Gladstone, or so we Ijndge from such a passage as this :

"Mr. Gladstone's attitude of open hostility and the exhibition of animosity which he constantly showed in the House of Commons, was a subject which Lord Beaconsfield often discussed. He told me Wat ho considered Mrs. Gladstone, when I'oung, en? of the prettiest women of her jay. and that he and Lady Bcaconsfield Bad always liked her, and wished to be Wends with them, but that Mr. Glad:*tono instead of giving them tho slightest : encouragement was always most repellent to any overture they made."

jJohn Bright was a member of Lady St. Heller's London salon, for so wo may fsy justly, and without flattery, call it. And about Bright we have what follows :

m It was a bitter thing for him to have 10 vole against his party, and, above all, : Jgiinst the leader whom he had so long followed to victory, and who shared all £ ls sentiments and sympathies, and, as IpKlid himself, he hated to be cheered ?y the. Tories. He told us that when £& went down to the House of Commons ...J? tot in the library and waited rntil the division bell rang, as he could not bear goin into the House to be cheered by I? party who were antipathetic to him in 6v «ry_sense of the word." #Sjr,William Harcourt was a welcome visitor at Harley-street, and Lady St. «ener dwells on his wit and sparkle. ■;i, ?.-j a l ? tells entertainingly how he (lined out for a whole week, in advance Jt;'s.invitations," and only " discovered |% mistake on the last night." Another "«na was Lord Randolph Churchill, an Vging personality, though, indeed— u * ~w as a most bewildering enterprise - ! ?S«v 9w the course of his friendships. fj? ees ne was inseparable from his j. B >'.At other times he would hardly mMi *. them ' and though this added excitement of a visit he i Hi . ha el '- to pay, it had its drawI cert* "* the hct that you were never • for twenty-four hours when the t^ttteS.1 0 , , m on e extreme to the other take placed

ROMANCE OF DEERSTALKING

" Whf.kkw !"

In spite of his self-control, a low whistle of astonishment hursts from the lips of tho stalker, who, from the shelter of a pile of boulders on the mountain top, has for the past half-hour been spying every foot of the great corrio below through a powerful telescope.

"What's up, Sandy?" asks the man boside him, an interested spectator of the ghillie's every movement

"A fine stag, with a head on him like he branches of an o.ik tree,'' replies the Highlander, closing 'his glass with a snap as a 6ign that the. time for action has arrived at last.

"Let me have a look at him," says the other, who has travelled up from the South for no other end than to sight a ehoot<ible stag. As he focusses the lens on the spot to which the stalker directs it there leaps into view, on the far side of the valley, a magnificent beast, lying by itself, in a" natural " pocket" half-way up the steep slope. From this distance of a mile or more, only a practised eye could pick out the grey-brown body and the massive tiers against the background of rock and heather, or note the group of hinds, thirty in number, feeding ft leisure, in a scattered group below their lord and master. It is obvious that even if the wind is right, a difficult etalk is in prospect before the chance of a shot at anything within one hundred and twenty yards can be obtained. The stag is watching all the lower part of the corrie, the hinds are spread" as to guard both flanks of the mountain side, and the wind.,, sucked up through the valley, as in a gigantic funnel, blows from all quarters of the compass, and especially over the ridge down upon the deer. But it if- such problems which make the fascination of stalking, and to solve which the rifle and the ghillie left the comfortable lodge eight miles away at eight o'clock in the morning to tramp across the moor and bog, and climb three thousand feet of rugged mountain. CRAFTY TACTICS. As the couple craftily steal away from the spying point, and eet out on a detour of a couple of miles to bring them to a place from which a further examination of the problem can be made, the sportsman revolves the various mischances by which the craft of stalking is beset. Fresh deer may be encountered on the way, either blocking tL ■ advance, or, if disturbed, running away t-> alarm their unsuspecting fellows. A hind, lying by itself, i i a corner where its presence could, bv no manner of means, have been discovered, may equally act as a danger-signal. Then, too. seized by those unaccountable impulses which affect wild animals, the beast on which the stalkers heart is set may have moved away whilst his pursuers are "hurrying towards the place where they located him. The wind, too, plays innumerable tricks with the chase. It will shift half a point for the fraction of a second when the sportsman is just reaching the firing-line, the puff of tamtea air sending the quarry scampering over the horizon It will curl in quite unexpected fashion round dips in the ground, blowing east up one side of a ridge and west down the other. . But even if all those factors help it, the stalk mav be ruined bv the stalkers them6€lves—a stone dislodged from a watercourse that has to be crossed on the stomach a head raised above the level of the shoulder, an uncontrollable desire to sneeze an undue rustling across the heather, an old cock-rouse disturbed, a ptarmigan sent wheeling away. These are the dangers to be circumvented before the report of the Mannlicher can ring out, and the monarch of the glen secured as a trophy of strong nerve and true eye. With these thoughts chasing themselves through the mind of the sportsman, he and his rdiillie Pursue their devious and difficult wav rounYcrags. across gullies, along precipitous paths, manoeuvring for a closer pv at the "ten-pointer" star. Sandy the stalker neglect? none of the precautions i necessary. At intervals he throws up lulls the cotton grass, with winch us waistcoat pocket is stuffed, to tost the direction of the wind, never turns a corner, ni descends a gully till he has searched he foreground with his glass, for chance of a lurking hind, chooses his wav so as to | avoid We stones, and call a halt tor ten minutes after a blue hare has scampered over the skv-line. As a result, an hour elapses before he and his master have crawled into a position on the crest of the corrie within five hundred yarns of the deer, for a final reconnaissance of the position.

DIFFICULT PBOURKSS.

There the animals still lie, the hinds spread out in a long line of sentinels, the s ta"- with its head raised snuffing the breeze which guards it from danger above. How to get across the exposed tract of rubble and grow, before the shelter of a low rockv spur within rifle shot of the deer can be reached, is the question. The only chance of avoiding the treacherous air-cur-rents is to cut the wind diagonally, by approaching in a planting direction so that [he scent may blow sideways on the stalkers and awav from the stag. A watercourse lving sheer down the hillside some two hundred yards away from the hinds, and dry until the next storm shall send it roaring in headlong spate, is the obvious- „ indeed it is the only—means of advance. His mind dear on this, the stalker retreats once more and hurries to the spot he has marked on the eky-line as the startin. point for the stalk. There pockets are emotied of their loose contents, everything which can militate against secrecy of movem„„, discarded, the rifle is drawn from its ZT loaded, and the safety bolt fastened. and then committing themselves to the. most hazardous and exciting enterprise in the sphere of British sport, the pan- fling themselves on tl.eir faces, wriggle inch by inch 'as close to the earth as they can press, over' the protecting ridge of the summit, and disaonoar into the recesses of the channel cut by the storm-water* of endless seavsons.

Sandy and his companion have to take three-quarters of an hour before a traverse can he effected on to the open face of the mountain. Then, in full view of the deer below, the pair have to imperceptibly move without arousing the suspicions ' of the hunted that the two brown objects , above are anything else than the rocks j thev appear to be. Let the slightest in- • cautious movement be detected, the least i unusual feature discerned, and all the previous exertion and suspense will be of no avail to secure a shot at the great beast cropping the short grass around its rest-ing-place, its crown of antlers tossing as it feeds. But all goes well. The exposed danger zone is crossed, and within two and a-half hours of first sighting the stag tho sportsman is lying behind a low protecting ridge of ground some 110 yards above and to the right of the animal. Free to look at the wild scenery of the corrie, and ever and again to spy cautiously through the "stalker's glass at the stag and I hinds, the rifle laid beside him ready for i instant use. the sportsman lies in his sheltered comer on the mountain, grim expectj ancy clutching at his heart lest the wind I may shift, or some chance reveal his presence to tho deer, until such moment as I it shall please the stag to rise to_ its feet I and present its broadside as a fair mark. I A shot at a sitting stag is only permissible I in an emergencvwhen the light is failing, the wind changing, the sportsman getI ting so chilled with waiting through long 1 hours in the damp and mist that delay j would be dangerous. But this particular afternoon—for it is past three o'clock— such factor warrants what is always a risky proceeding, and so for hour after hour in the j warm weather, with a hundred charms of I skv and scenerv to please his eye, his mind dwells pleasantlv on the fortunes of the chase on other davs and in other climes, the stalker waits by his rfle, until, with at tightening of his muscles, and an exhilarating thrill through every nerve, he sees the stag rise slowly to its feet, shake itself, and prepare to shepherd its attendant hinds to the evening meal by the shores of the tiny loch in the ltottom of the corrie, a thousand feet below. The slightest movement from that ridge above is The sign, were the stag aware of it that the rifle has been raised to the shoulder of a prostrate man, the foresight levelled on the line of its shaggy-fide, just behind the shoulder. There is a flash, a report, and with a thud tho bullet strikes the beast in the heart, toppling it heels I over head down the lons slope, to ho thunder of the hoofs of the flying hinds. 1 Other deer Iving further along the come j join in the mad stampede, making for the I pass which leads to a distant wood, till i the whole rout of animals leaves the great 1 vallev to the dead bodv of their fellow, a ! ghiilie, alrcadv occupied in the last rites of the stalk, and a sportsman, drinking the j customary toast of "More blood in neat I whisky. _____