Illustrated London Letter.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1030, 27 November 1891, Page 12

Illustrated London Letter.

(from our special correspondent.) London, October 2. The Lohengrin Ructions. The monkey and the tiger went hand-in-hand round the Place de I’Opera in Paris dtiring the performance of Wagner’s ‘ Lohengrin * inside. Evidently there is still a portion of the Pari-sian populace left that refuses to be rational. Let us all devoutly pray that they will display the passions of the chiljfpen of Lutetia. The disgraceful scenes both within and without the grandest opera house in Europe were a dis-iraca to civilisation and a reproach to the ringleaders wlio sought to stir the slumbering passions of the people. 1 have it on the best authority, from one who was present during the scenesat the Place de I’Opera, that Paul Ddroulede was at the bottom of all the mischief. But it was speedily checked, and with a firm hand ; but Paul himself, as is often the case with these pestilential mischief-makers, has escaped scot free. One thing the rioters did was to ensure a great success for the second, performance, whence the price of seats rose to as much as 250 francs (£10). Speech and Song in Pennyworths. Edison—the wizard of Menlo Park, as our American cousins are so fond of call ing him—is again going to set the world a-talking, and, indeed, a-liatening. From the workshops and laboratories in Menlo Park, inventions are turned out with the rapidity and despatch of chairs and tables from more prosaic factories, and one never knows what to expect next. Edison’s latest is an automatic phonograph, which is to be worked on the übiquitous penny-in-the-3lot plan. It is enclosed in an oaken box, with a plate glass top, through

which the movement of the machinery will bo visible. All you have to do will be to drop .a penny down the money-box, and instantly the mechanism sets to work with a song, recitation, or the more or less melodious blasts of a full regimental band. The cylinder of the machine is to be changed daily with speeches by Mr Gladstone and other eminent statesmen, and songs by Patti, Albanl, Sima Reeves, Santley, and a host of others, and if we can only have * Ht-tiddly-hi-ti ’ and ‘ You Wink the Other Eye ’ on it, ir the actual tones of -Charles Godfrey and Marie Lloyd, the automatic echo should prove a great success, I learn from Colonel Gouraud, Edison’s energetic representative in England, that the machines will very soon be seen in all public places. Colonel Gouraud mentioned a very interesting use to which the phonograph has lately been put. An American literary society has asked the Colonel to obtain by means of the phonograph the ‘ street sounds ’ of London. This desire is being carried out, and, moreover, a photographer is taking views of the street

THE EDISON AUTOMATIC PHONOGRAPH, scenes simultaneously with the record of the sounds. Bearding the Kaiser. There is great rejoicing among the photographers of the Fatherland, for the Emperor has grown a beard. William 11. has never bsen reluctant to face the camera, so the professors, of the black art in Berlin are looking forward to a rich harvest of new ‘ cartes,’ * cabinets,’ and ‘pastels,’ all showing His Imperial Majesty with his new hirsute appendage. Thu painters, too, are jubilant at the altered condition of the Imperial visage, and innumerable palettes are being

‘set’ in order than His Restlessness may bo reduced to enduring canvas, beard and all. Angeli. the Austrian Court painter, has already been sent for in hot haste ‘ to take His Majesty off,’ now that he has returned from his travels, ‘bearded like the pard.’ But whilst there is rejoicing among the artists, the barbers are in despair. They see in the near future a bearded Germany, with never so much as a clean chin or cheek in the army, or among the civilians. The Emperor sets the fashion, and the German Figaros must flit 1 Kit Marlowe. ‘ The world knows little of its greatest men’ would have been a fitting inscription on the Marlowe Memorial, unveiled on Wednesday last by Mr Henry Irving, at Canterbury. To the people at large, Marlowe is a very shadowy dramatist i ndeed, with a hazy record rounded off by a prosaic death, after the uianner of tne

late Mr Bardoll, who, it will be remembered, made a sudden exit from this vale of tears, through having been hit upon the head with a pewter pot. But Mar-

lowe still lives with the student few, though, perhaps, after Mr Irving’s eloquent tribute to his genius he will now become popular with the reading many. By the by, 1 wonder, as Mr Irving has now taken Marlowe, as it were, under his mantle, whether, alter Henry VIII. has run his course, wo are to have one of Marlowe’s masterpieces at the Lyceum 1 With the exception of Shakespeare, Marlowe is our greatest Elizabethan dramatist. Hops and Hoppers. There is no prettier sight under God’s sweet heaven than a Kentish hop garden with the bronzed pickers, busy filling the pockets from the laden poles. Some would have us believe that there is a seamy side to the scene —that the people are badly, paid and worse cared for, and that, in fact, the fair fields of Kent have been invaded by the sweater, and that worse vices. than even, he is capable of abound whore the pickers congregate. The rate of pay, though small per bushel—--2d is the regulation price—still tots up to a decent sum per diem. A good picker, beginning at seven in the morning and working till four, ought to be able to gather at least fifteen bushels in the day. Thus the wage of the ‘ hoppers ’ is more than is generally credited, and it invari-

ably enables them to carry home something more than a fund of health for the winter. During the past few years, although there has bejn a decline in tne acreage under cultivation, liop-growing is far from the moribund industry it has been represented in some quartors to be. The falling off was occasioned by the grubbing of inferior hop land ; now it would appear that plauters are giving their attention to the cultivation of better class grades. Cycling in France. My Paris correspondent sends me a note which will prove interesting to English cyclists. _ He writes : The prizes awarded in the bicycle race to Brest and back, which was instituted with such success by ‘ Le Petit Journal,’ were distributed last Saturday. Charles Terroot, the winner of the first prize, who accomplished the journey in less than three days, received about £BOO as his reward for his energy and endurance. Of this sum £6OO was given him by the manufacturer of the bicyolette on which his feat was accomplished. Charles Terront, who has distinguished himself in England also, is a professional velocipedist. He is thirty-four years old, and, for a French-

man, a man of most athletic build. He began riding the ‘bi’ years ago, when he was in the employment of a boulevard newspaper for carrying despatches from Versailles to Paris. Jiel Laval, who came in second, and who, but for an imprudent sleep on the way back, would have come in first, is an amateur. He is by profession a glove manufacturer, established at Bordeaux. In a recent race from Bordeaux to Paris, which was won by the English velocipelist Mills, the Englishmen, Holbein, Edge, and

JIEL LAVAL. CHARLES TERRONT. Bates, being second, third, and fourth. Jiel Laval came in fifth. The Brest race was a very good one, and attracted great interest throughout Franc*. One result of it has been to prove that, almost without exception, the bicycles made by French manufacturers are totally woithless for heavy work, a circumstance which should be productive of a great increase in the English export bicycle trade.

The New Postmaster-General. It is the unexpected that always happens in Lord Salisbury’s appointments, and the announcement that Sir James Fergusson has been called upon to undertake the duties of PostrcasterGoneral came as ja surprise to everyone. Sir James, no doubt, is an excellent and painstaking but his participation in parliamentary debate has not shown him to be possessed of any especial brilliancy as a speaker, nor can it be said that his manner of answering questions in the House has given any general satisfaction. Sir James, who is close upon sixty years of age, commenced his career in the army, serving in the Grenadier

Guards, and being wounded atlnkermau. It is thirty-seven years Bince he first entered Parliament. After a brief tenure of office first as Under-Secretary for India, and subsequently a 3 Undersecretary for the Home Department, he was in 1868 appointed Governor of South Australia. Five years later he beoma Governor of New Zealand, but resigned the appointment the following year. In 1880 he succeeded Sir Richard Temple as Governor of Bombay, a post he filled with considerable distinction for a period of five years. The extensive Indian, colonial and foreign experience which Sir James has had in the course of his official duties promises well f>r the prospects of ocean penny postage. The Bishop-designate of Zululand. The nomination of the Rev William Marlborough Carter to the B shopric of Zululand should prove thoroughly popular to the South African people, if we may measure the reverend gentleman’s character and capabilities for the post by the widespread regret which has been expressed by all who know him, on account of his departure from the mission field of the East End of London, where for eleven years he has toiled with conspicuous Buccese. Throughout his clerical career he has laboured among the working classes and the poorest of the poor. When he was ordained in 1874 hit first curacy was at West Bromwich.

From the densely populated Black Country he retired to the comparative quietude of the semi-rustic parish of Bakewell, Derbyshire, IJis stay these was brief,

and in 1880 ho was invited to take charge of tho Eton Missiou at Hackney. Then the congenial work of his , early life at West Bromwich came back to him, and he has so well fulfilled the expectations that were formed of him when appointed, that, as Dr Warre, the h*>ad master of the Eton College, expressed it at a recent meeting of the supporters of the mission, no one could hear of Mr Carter’s approaching depasture without dismay.