LONDON GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1108, 26 May 1893, Page 31

LONDON GOSSIP.

SPECIAL TO NEWZEALAND MAIL. (fbom ovs. special oobbebpondent.) London, Good Friday. Mr Balfour's speech last Monday evening on the vote of censure (the eighth this session) upon the Government's Irish policy, which an indiscreet Tory bad trapped him into proposing, was dull, half-hearted, and delivered to a three parts empty house. Mr Morley replied listlessly, and the members present were all either asleep or unspeakably bored, when —oh ! what a welcome surprise ! Enter the G.O.M. (who seldom returns after dinner) wearing a huge rose, brisk as a two«y ear-old, brimming with post-prandial affability, and evidently in fine fighting form. He was in one of his light-hearted veins, and, on rising, soon put everyone in a thoroughly good ! temper. Raising a laugh i»t the start by a comic mispronunciation of some particularly Irish locality, he picked to pieoes the specific charges brought against the Irish executive, and rallied his opponents. The House laughed again and again. His definition of tu quoquo was a particularly happy touch. Tu quoque, he said, is when you've done a thing you cannot defend, and know that your adversary has done likewise, you dwell on his inability to defend himself. But the Government, he added, can and do defend their Irish policy. At this point Mr Gladstone grew hoarse, and whispered to a colleague, ' Would you get me a glass of water V Before the Liberal addressed could start on his mission the ex»lrish Secretary (Mr Jackson) seized a glass of water set ready for Lord Randolph Churchill, and handed it across the table to the Premier. ' I only hope,' said the latter, as he bowed gratefully to his courteous op- ! ponent, J that some day the right honourable j gentleman will be as ready to drink at my fountain head as I now drink at his.' It was a pretty pieoe of by-play, and foN lowed up happily by Lord Randolph in the opening sentences of his speech. There was aieferenceto the difficulty of following up Mr Gladstone in debate, and a neatly-turned expression of hope that the House might for a longtime to come hear such speeches as it had just heard. Lord Randolph himself only did modorately well; occasionally, however, convulsing the House with a thoroughly Randolphian story or simile. For example, the Government, he said, reminded him of an old lady charged with malicious assault, who had neither counsel nor witnesses to defend her, but ' some very good friends among the jury.' THE PAYMENT OP MEMBERS. Though the Government stands committed by last Friday's motion to the payment of members on some system or other some day, it is perfectly certain neither this session, nor i next, nor the session after that will see a Bill I brought in on the subject. Only a very small section of Radicals and Labour oandi. dates desire to go the whole hog and salary every member of the House whether he wishes to be paid or not. The majority favour the amendment of an infrequent and , infelicitous speaker, but a power on committees and a capital man of business, Mr 1 William Bathbono. This gentleman sug- t gested that only honourable members who t require payment, and were willing to prove to a Parliamentary Committee (specially ap. pointed to consider such applications) that they required assistance in order to do justice to the constituency which elected them, c should receive it. For instance, supposing s John Burns to be elected for Battersea. He | would in duo course apply for salary and go 1 up for examination before the Committee. \ They would then decide the salary it was 9 desirable to grant him. Some constituencies t are much more expensive to represent than e others, A poor man representing a section a

of Liverpool, Manchester, or Bradford would require a larger salary than if he were .member for Limerick or Donegal or a Scotch township. The Committee would also be able to discourage briefless barristers and others entering Parliament merely for the sake of the honorarium. As a matter of fact, indeed, this scheme of payment would offer no temptation to adventure/s. Tho game wouldn't be worth the candle. Mr Allen's proposal to pay all members, rich and poor, a fixed Btipend, whether they want it or not, seems absurd. Yet many I know hold the scheme must be that or nothing. The debate re payment was lifeless and dull till Jno. Burns got up and in his breeziest manner described the temptations of a labour member. He likewise maintained, parodying Gilbert, that' an agitator's life U not a happy one.'

THE TEMPIATIONS OF A LABOUR MEMBER. Traversing the statement that the pay. ment of members was not desirable in the interests of the House, Mr Burns said frequently attempts were made to corrupt members of that House simply because they happened to be poor. He would give them a specimen of the sort of thing a poor man had to put up with. A commission agent in Belfast, who wanted to be appointed a collector of income.tax, had written to him asking for his assistance, and the letter ended aa follows ; Trusting you will give my most urgent claim your most careful consic eration, I shall be happy to hand you a £SO note for pressing my claim upon the Government. (Laughter.) He believed he received this letter because there was a suspicion abroad that his wages fund was depleted, and that he was the poorest man in the House. That was the , reason for this insult to his representative position and for this attempt to sully the dignity and honour of that House. This was the reply he sent back : Dear Sir,—You are an unscruoulous i scoundrel. (Laughter.) Your villainy ia only accentuated by your contemptible Presbyterian hypocrisy. (Laughter.) You : can consider yourself fortunate that you are not within reach of my boot. (Loud laughter ) He had received many other letters showing that the writers believed that a poor man could be tempted and demoralised. Here was another instance of an insurance company which offered him £3OO a year to lend his name to tho company, to give it ten minutes of his time four days a week, with an ; office and two clerks at his disposal, and the I reason assigned for tho offer was that the t title of " M.P." would induce men of his own ■ class to take up policies in the compauy. Those were risks that the House ought to ' protect men of his class against. (Cheers.) i These were two cases out of 50 or 60 he might quote.' Mr Burns added that a member of Parlia--1 ment today had practically to give eight or ten hours a day to his Parliamentary work. He had been in tho House ten weeks, and his average time of service had been 7| hours per day for every day that tho house had sat. That meant that members had hundreds of letters, to answer all of which a poor man like himself could not afford even the postage. Thus they were compelled to neglect many of tha interests of their constituents for the simple reason that they could not afford tho secrotarial help which payment for their servioes in the House would enable them to procure. ( Hear, hear.) He did not intend to be at all modest on this question. He believed that modesty was only made for those who had no beauty. (Loud laughter.) Four and a half years ago he was taken from the workshop by his constituents. The bargain they made was that he was to have for representing them on tho Council and subsequently in Parliament his working wages as an engineer, plus those out-of-pooket expenses such as postage, telegrams, and travelling necessarily incurred. What did he find now ?He found that the wages fund was continually rising and falling, and if anyone thought that an } agitator's life was a happy one he should be ) glad to change positions with him. (Laughter * and oheera.) A man who started to give eight hours' work a day for other people generally ended by working 18 hours himself. (Laugh, ter.) But there might bo times when, through trade depression, or through a difference between him and the constituency, or the men who paid him, his wages might bo stopped, add ho would find his Parliamentary career out »hort. Personally he should go back to tha workshop with the greatest pleasure rather than submit to temptations of the character which he had referred to; but they had no right to subject tho average poor man who was a member of that House, or to permit him to be subject, to tho probable temptations that unscrupulous men might impose upon him—temptations that would be all the stronger to a lazy man or a man who was indisposed to go back to the poverty and discomfort of the class to which ho belonged. And what was tho alternative ? To neglect his duty to his constituency, and bocome, perhaps, what was known as a blacklog journalist, betraying the secrets of hia party for £6 or £lO a week, which he would probably never think of doing if he received payment for his services as a member. (Cheers aud laughter.) Worse than that, such a man would run the risk of becoming what some men, not in this House, had shown a disposition to become—a guinea-pig, the instrument, tho plastic material in tha hands of company-promoters, and thus offending against the characterand dignity of. that House. (Cheers.)

SIR C. DILKE. If at the present time the Cup of Life contains aught of bitterness for the spookstricken Stead it must be found ia the gradual but sure reinstating of Sir Charles Dilketo his old position in tho House— * position ho held before the nover to-be-for-gotten Crawford case, not by virtue of oratorical ability, but by reason of an almost enoyolop»lic knowledge of facts, figures and minute details concerning matter*

brought before Parliament. Sir Charles is one of those men who seem to possess no interest in life outside politics. He has wealth. a many-sided intelligence, physical capacity of i'o mean order—in fact everything necessary to the proper enjoyment of life, and yet, for the sake of a seat in Parliament, he has endured for seven long years the most virulent abuse the splenetic Stead could pour out on him. There are traces in Sir Charles' face of the mental suffering through which he has passed, but in many respects he looks younger to-day than he did when a Cabinet Minister. He has lost the deadly pallor, the look of fag and weariness, and to a certain extent the shiftiness of expression which, when in office, repelled many people. Sir Charles has taken up the broken thread of his political life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he wero in office and responsible for everything that is going on. He never talks unless he knows his subject, and the House appreciates him for that virtue. THE LOTINGAS. The President of the Divorce Court was evidently of opinion that whatever might be the sins or Mr ' Mantalini' McKerrow he must have suffered much at the hands of that unspeakable woman, the petitioner, and deserved the sympathy of all right feeling men. The Judge himself endured horriblb things'at Mrs McKerrow's hands. For nearly a fortnight she outraged every law and precedent of tho court, haranguing His Lordship, counsel, and witnesses with appalling volubility and at times even patronising the first named. Poor Sir Francis writhed and groaned and finally rebuked the insolent creature. With diabolical cleverness she instantly fell back on her sex. What could one poor woman do against such an array of ' big-wigs.', No doubt she did make mistakes, and if the Judge was going to be aga'inst her too she must give up, &c, Of course Sir Francis could only assure the gasping d&me that he-was not against her, that the rules of the court were being stretched in every direction to afford her fair play and that she really had better not pose as a martyr. , Mrs McKerrow's mother was, we are re- l minded, herself the heroine of a cause celebre. It seems Mr Lotinga, the partner of the ' lady's joys and sorrows, having insured his life heavily, died suspiciously and the companies concerned declined to pay up. Mrs Lotinga sued them, and employing counsel : lost her case. She then appealed, and with Sir Charles Russell against her, conducted the case in person to a successful issue. 'FLASH' LOTINGA. Mrs McKerrow's brother, popularly known as' Flash ' Lotinga, is also distinguished, or rather notorious, upon the running-track, ■where he wears satin coats of many colours. These, with a florid taste in jewellery and a large nose render his descent unmistakable. Early on in the McKerrow case Mrs Lotinga was ordered out of court for prompting her daughter, and on Friday afternoon the same fate befel Mr ' Flash.' The President characterised the conduct of the latter as ' simply abominable,' whereat the young man's assumption of injured innocence became beautiful to witness. He was toying with his pencil negligently, and it was he vowed pure incident which caused him to mark the plan on the table in a manner which conveyed a direct hint to the petitioner. ' Out you go,' •was His Lordship's only comment. Looking grievously pained at this cynical incredulity Lotinga with many bows withdrew. THE BROOCH MYSTERY. ' Hebe,'a contributor to the Gentlewoman, is responsible for a strange statement affecting the almost forgotten brooch case. ' She asserts that an Indian officer, who is now over here, and somehow or another only heard of the trial the other states that he was in the late Captain French's bungalow at Delhi when that officer purchased the famous brooch from an itinerant vendor. Further, lie distinctly remembers Frenoh saying he meant to send it Mrs Leader as a weddingpresent. ' Hebe ' does not give her officer's name, which is a pity. It looks as though she had not perfeot faith in his veracity. Personally, I should require the Anglo-Indian to make what the butterman in ' Our Boys' calls an 'Alfred-David ' on the subject before I acoapted his stary as worth credence. Of course, if it is true, it clenohes Mrs Leader's case. LORD HASTINGS. , This nobleman, who was finsd £SO or three months for an incomprehensible act of iudecencj in Regent's Park the other day, be - longs to the Prince of Wales' set and is an intimate friend ef the Duke of Portland. "Unless he was drunk or drugged the charge alleged seems as incredible as senseless. The policemen who spoke to accused and appear to Jiave witnessed the behaviour alleged say he seemed not to hear thorn. The nature of tho defence urged on his lordship's behalf has not transpired. Lord Hastings is a Roman Catholio and no relation to the notorious ract ing marquis. THE JARGON OF SCIENCE. In all the languages of the world there is nothing so incomprehensible as the scientific jargon and nothing bo unnecessary. To ecientists these seems to be a wondrous fas cination in word combination. They go on building up babels of vowels, consonants, and diphthongs, and the result must in the end be confusion and the spoiling of much good •work. Professor Sergi is a croniologist of distinction in Italy. To him someone sent a akull digged up somewhere in Melanesia, and the professor examined it with the following appalling results. He described it as hypsia-. cephalic, it was cremnoopistocramic-chamel-Tiogathie, tetragonic, platyrrhine, ard orthognathic ; he traced signs both sphenocephaly and do.lichemoso-brachycephalic ; whilst briefly summing up the remaining features of the Melanesian cranium, they were metriocephalic, hypostegobregnmtic, hypsin-cho-bregmatic. euryzicie, chameprosopic, and Jiyper-platopio I Professor Moritz Benedict,

a German scientist, and therefore doubly inured to the word-combination craze, has written to Professor Sergi begging him not to repeat the offence again ; and most people will subscribe to Herr Benedict's petition. It is bad enough to know that one's headpiece may be described as hyper-platopic or platyrrhine, but when we get to cremnospiat—&c., it is time to call a halt. Besides we don't know what the wordß may mean, and the closest scrutiny of Webster or Johnson fails to enlighten to any appreciable extent.

THE TENTH DUKE OF BEDFORD. It was inevitable that the Btidden death from fatty degeneration of the heart of the tenth Duke of Bedford, following so soon upon his father's suicide should raise a cackle of suspicious conjectures. But everything seems quite straightforward. His Grace's life had hung on a thread for years and he and all around him were painfully aware of the fact. On Friday evening about nine o'clock he left the drawing-room for a moment. A quarter of an hour later the Duchess, assuming he had gone to bed, went upstairs to their room. The Duke was lying on the floor quite dead. An over-good dinner is supposed brought on the attack, which proved fatal. His Grace ate largely—was very stout for his age—barely forty-one. The shyness, which ma'le lile a burden to the ninth head of the great House of Russel, was inherited by the late Duke. At Harrow, as a lad, he was the butt of his sohoolfellows, who made his life miserable with petty persecution. Things were not much better at Oxford till his father's accession to the Dukedom made him Marquis of Tavistock, and the inevitable toadies attached themselves to him. As he grew older, the man's shyness increased. When the ninth Duke committed suicide many remarked they would have been less surprised had Tavistock done such a thing. The gossips about Woburn say the Duke was a gourmand. In his domestic relations he had the reputation of being severe and very near as re« gards money. The local tradespeople complained bitterly of the lack of orders. One man said his bill for a month did not come to 30s, and then it was carefully checked and sent back for over-charges to be corrected. Yet he was one of the chief tradesmen near Woburn, and in the ninth Duke's time had supplied the Abbey with everything in his line. The Duchess everyone loves. She is a sweet woman, and influenced her husband to materially lower the rents on his estates. Her charities have always been extensive. The late Duke had no children, and is succeeded by his brother, Lord Herbrand Russell, a thorough man of tho world, who was A.D.C. to Lord Dufforin in India. For yeard Lord Herbrand has practically represented the elder branch of the Russells in society and politics, as neither his father nor brother went out. He is very popular.

A COSTLY QUARREL. Some very strange stories are current as to the quarrel which has not improbably cost Mrs Langlry the late Abington Baird's fortune. On dit the Squire went to see the Lily one evening in liquor and, in the presence of several persons, cast very serious aspersions on her character. A row royal set in, which ended in Mr Baird being removed, and Mrs Langtry (no doubt accidentally) getting a black eye. The lady was furious, solicitors were called in, and a police court case threatened. A money salve settled the black eye, but Baird was barred out of the house he had given Mrs Langtry, and never saw her again. When in America, he sent Mr Bernard Abrahams to treat for forgiveness. Mrs Langtry, doubtless, rejoices she sent a dignified but not unfriendly answer.