Gossip.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 999, 24 April 1891, Page 6

Gossip.

The Japanese stand at the head in the matter of divorce. A native of Bizen has just been divorced from his 35th wife, and is about to marry his 36th.

A lady staying at an English country-house where gambling is de rigueur, was taken suddenly ill. Not to be thwarted, ,tke host telegraphed to a friend in town the following characteristic message, * Please send down at once another baccarrat woman.’

A good story is told in the Spectator of one of our living bishops, who once stayed at the house of a country gentleman —a teetotaler. On the dinner-table there were no intoxicants, but the host said to his guest in an undertone, ‘My lord, you will find some wine in your bedroom.’ Bye and by the squire came to dine with the bishop, and found wine set before him, but the bishop also took care to say quietly during dinner, ‘ Mr So-and-so, you will find some water in your bedroom.’

It is a curious and significant fact that cloak-rooms in some of tho smartest houses at the West-End are often put iu charge of a detective on tho night of a big reception or ball. Evening wraps are now so handsome and expensive that ladies cannot afford to lose them, and it sometimes happens that, in spite of the number on the ticket, a cloak, not bearing, a corresponding number, is taken away- Ladies now almost always carry their wraps into the theatres with them; and as one of these beautiful garments often costs from forty to fifty or sixty pounds, there is little wonder that some anxiety is felt for its safety.

In the curtain at the new English operahouse the foundation is gold-coloured silk, on which has been worked au applique of a darker tone of the same colour. The applique a florated adaptation of pineapples and pomegranates, -conventionally treated —is .of the Renaissance period. The applique is outlined by a fine cord of silk ; a fringe with tasßels decorates the foot of the curtain. Ihe silk is about a yard wide and between 500 and 600 yards of it, and more than thirty gross of cord, have been used in the curtain. The silk was made in Lyons, and the cord and fringe in London. The lining is of yellow sateen, and the substance of the curtain is obtained by layers of wadding. The valance is also aplique work in bright reds, blues, yellows, and browns, and has been carried out by the same embroiderers.

Ladies who have any respect for the creations of the milliner’s art have long viewed with dislike the ugly holes caused by the liat pins that are now worn. The pins, too, are not firm, and it is common to see a lady who starts with her liat jauntily set upon her hair return home with the said headgear perched at anything but a dignified angle to her features. All these troubles are to bo obviated in future by the use of the patent bat protestor. The protector is a cork pad, which would be placed under the lining of the hat on the side where the point of the pin usually emerges. The pad receives the pin, holds it with elastic firmness, aud ia likely to be a great comfort in wear.

The Baroness Burdett-Coutts is now in her seventy-seventh year. Her latest dinner dress is described os follows : —The material is a beautiful Louis XV. brocade, the ground of which is palest yellow, strewn with flowers in palest pink, a combination that resembles that seen in the wild honeysuckle. The skirt, is plain, but tlie bodice has revers of coral pink velvet, lined with green, matched to the tints of the flowers and foliage on the brocade. The short basque is edged with folds of the two velvets, and the front is filled with soft whiteness and fine old Flanders lace. A Medici collar finishes the bodice at the nook. The sleeves are slashed at the top with the coral velvet, and finished at the wrists with the fashionable gauntlet-cuff in coral velvet lined with green. The head-dress to be worn with this is composed of Flanders point and a cluster of velvet japonica in two shades of pink, harmonising with the brochd and velvet.

Nelly, the only daughter of General Grant, was married. to Captain Algie Sartoris, an English gentleman, a number of years ago. Information is now received that he is dying in the south of France. Mrs Sartoris has two daughters aud a son aged 13 years. She is living in a fashionable quarter of London, in an elegant residence that cost £40,000, and enjoys an annual income of £7500. Colonel Ochiltree, in a letter to the New York Sun, says that Mrs Sartoris is in possession of a large fortune, settled upon her by the father of her husband in an ante-nuptial contract, and, in the event of his death, the property reverts to her children. Mrs Sartoris, although separated from her husband on account of his insobriety, moves in the highest social circles in England, being a frequent and welcome visitor at Marlborough House, and dines at stated intervals with her Majesty the Queen, and holds the most friendly relations with her husband’s father.

The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland enjoys the right of kissing each debutante at Dublin Castle upon tho cheek. Truth’s Dublin correspondent writes :—‘There used to be more kissing at Dublin Castle in the good old days. Strange to say, it was one of the few traditions ever abolished in the place, and. the abolition did not happen very long ago either. A certain vice-queen—she shall be nameless who was past the kissing stage of life, had very strong opinions on the subject of. the Irish viceroy’s extraordinary kissing privileges, when her husband happened to be that privileged individual. On arriving at Dublin Castle she made a summary attack on tradition, overthrew and abolished for ever the old custom of each viceroy at his first drawingroom kissing every woman present. Was not that a sweeping reform —hundreds of kisses swept away m one fell stroke 1 ’ The wife of some future Lord-Lieutenant may insist on the kissing of the debutantes being given up, and a custom which. seems peculiar in those days I will be no more.