LONDON GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1200, 1 March 1895, Page 9

LONDON GOSSIP.

From Our Own Correspondent. London, January 4. MR GLADSTONE. This time last year we were all sadly anticipating Mr Gladstone's immediate demise. It could not be long delayed said the doctors solemnly. The magnificent constitution had at last gone to pieces, and what overwork at an advanced age had begun the wrench of resignation would complete. But a twelvemonth has elapsed since then, and the Grand Old Man shows no signs whatever of giving up the ghost. On the contrary he appears i more vigorous at eighty-five than at j eighty-four. When one remembers the I few hours per diem spent out of bed by ,the average octogenarian one begins to' . Realise what a phenomenon the ex-Prime \ Minister is. On his birthday last Saturday, for example, Mr Gladstone rose at half-past six and an hour later was fuming because a marrow-chilling north-east gale presented his walking to the early service at Hawarden Church. The morning was spent opening hundreds of congratulatory telegrams, and several mail bags full of letters and presents from all parts of the world. Then about noon the right; honourable gentleman donned his fur coat, and accompanied by Mrs Gladstone and other members of his family, not forgetting Miss Dorothy Drew (who hopped gaily along holding grandpapa's haud), proceeded to the Hawarden vestry. There an Armenian deputation introduced by Mr F. S. Stevenson, M.P., were waiting, and to them Mr Gladstone delivered, seated in a chair, a speech eloquent, vigorous, impassioned, which is being read this morning in all parts of the world with respectful attention.

THE UNSPEAKABLE TURK. Mr Gladstone's utterances must al-_ ways command attention, but on this Armenian question he has a special right to be heard. He is still the true ' friend to whom the oppressed subjects of the "unspeakable Turk" turn naturally in their direst need. And well they may. "It was thought," said the Grand Old Man on Saturday with just pride, " it was thought a great extravagance when I said that I thought it was time the Turk and all his belongings should go out of Bulgaria bag and baggage." The Tories gibed scornfully, scoffing at Mr Glandstone's outcry, which might, they said, be sumptuous verbosity, but certainly wasn't practical statesmanship. Yet put went the Turk neck and crop, bag and baggage. It was a glorious crusade. Mr Gladstone's burning words swept over Europe like a flame setting alight to fierce indignation everywhere. Before it the Sultan of'those days and his friend Lord Beaconsfield cowered and fell. When the treaty of Berlin had been signed, and the Turkish Empire "consolidated" by the; simple but effectual process of curtailment, even the dullest Tories could see who was the practical statesman and who the mouthing declaimers. Whether the Turk in Armenia has been worse than the Turk in Bulgaria we shall know presently, when the commission now enquiring into the atrocities has reported. One thing, however, is certain. If there were (as the' Armenians feared) a chance of the scandal being forgotten or hushed up, the G.O.M. has destroyed it. No one living can command such an audience as he, or arouse the world's conscience more effectually. The Armenian commissioners will now do their work with the Gladstonian eye upon them. If it is unsatisfactory the great Powers are sure to take the matter up. Lord Bosebery will see to that.

BOMBALINO. Who was •' Bombalino ?" You might up to last week have put this query to a large percentage of well-informed persons and received no answer to it. Even those who could have told were probably unaware that the dethroned monarch still lived. " Bombalino's" real name was Francis 11. He succeeded his parent Ferdinand, or " Bomba," as King of the Two Sicilies, and the movement for the unification of Italy in 1860 ended his reign within twelve months. " Bombalino " had in him all the makings of a wise Prince, and with fortune a little kinder, might have figured gloriously in history. At the long siege of Gaeta, both he and" his Queen behaved nobly. Regardless of their lives the young couple went about amid the shot and shell from Cialdini's cannon, tending the wounded and inspiring the defenders by voice and example. They are talked of to this day in Sicily, and when, after a long life passed in peaceful retirement, the Bombalino died last week, he was there, at any rale, sincerely mourned.

A REPENTANT FORGER. The middle-class Yankee when . pure and unadulterated by pernicious foreign influences is a charming study. Be but notorious and he will forgive you—as he would say himself—" just anything." Here in this benighted old land when a man robs a bank, or forges a cheque, or mints counterfeit coin, or defrauds the widow and orphan, society looks coldly upon him ever after. He may bear his punishment manfully and do his utmost to atone, but it must be under a new name and amidst fresh surroundings. To confess his identity with that of a man who fell would be to damn his chances utterly. A few good and true souls might be kind and many more would certainly

be patronising, but the majority would simply avoid him. In America they manage things very differently, as witness the case of Mr Austin Bidwell, commonly called the " King of the Forgers." About the year 1869 this enterprising person was chief of a gang of forgers, whose depredations on no less a person than the Old Lady of Threadneedle street thrilled the commercial community considerably. They were ultimately all lagged, and Bidwell, their leader, got penal servitude for life.

Two years ago, having done his " twenty stretch " (to use the professional phrase), Mr Bidwell emerged from gaol a reformed character. " I faced," he says, " our fearful sentence manfully, and after having paid justice her pound of flesla came out with courage and fortitude unbroken to begin again the battle of life."

Mr Bidwell went to America, where, instead of hiding his light under a bushel, he proclaimed both sin and punishment on the house-tops. " The Kh?g of the Forgers: Repentant and Seeking a Better Life Settles in Hartford, Conn.," announced the papers. He was " interviewed" of course, and related harrowing experiences of prison sufferings. Parsons and philanthropists patronised Mr Bidwell (he was a splendid draw at; tea meetings) and business men gave him a hand. His was a verv interesting case and he made the utmost of it. . The man's record, which in England would have damned him, in Hartford helped him on. Everyone wanted to do something for this phenomenal repentant sinner,. this prince of reformed prigs. Nowadays Mr Bidwell holds a high place in serious circles :. at Hartford. Writing to the London Evening Nexvs, which on November 19 devoted an article to his able exploits as a forger, he says, "In the two years since hi} liberation I have made a record and achieved a position in the literary world as well as in the world of finance. . So much so, that when I went on a mission to Philadelphia a few months ago, I carried introductions and vouchers, from the wealthiest and most Conservative banker, in America. And this week I am to be the guest of the first literary club in New York. The Mayor of this city or any bank or banker will vouch for me."

THE QUEEN OF THE PRERAPHAELITES. Miss Christina Rossetti, who died rather suddenly on Saturday morning, was recently described by an acknowledged judge as " within her range the most perfect poetess that this country has produced." And yet many tolerably well read people had never, even heard of her, or if they'd heard of her knew nothing of her work. I remember {when the dis' cussion as to who Tennyson's successor should be was on, and Mr Patchett Martin and others very stoutly maintaining the claims, of' Miss Rosetti, hearing an Oxford MA. '"ask, '* Who is this Christina Rossetti? Dante Gabriel Rossetti I have, heard of, but Christina is new to me, Tell me about her." Needless to say this student was a Scot and confined his reading of poetry to Burns and the Wizard of the North. Nevertheless so far as Miss Rossetti is concerned, I'm afraid a. good many of us are like him.

Christina Rossetti belonged to one of the most remarkable families,; of our century, every member of which seemed to be endowed with the indescribable quality we call genius. The Rossettis were the children of an Italian refugee and the finest Italian qualities were common to all of them. They were brought up on, Dante and saturated with his work and his spirit. Only those can truly appre; ciate the greatest of Florentines who possess a religious mind' combined with an artistic sense. It was the "Divine Cominedia" and " Vita Nuova " which, above all else, inspired the work of the Rossettis, and gave them their sense of form as well as their ideas. Christina was the youngest child of Gabriele Ros*etti, born in 1830, and two years younger than the poet painter. She has been styled the Queen of the PreRaphaelites, and aptly enough her position amongst the brotherhood has been compared with that of the very different Margaret Fuller amongst the TranscendenAll the Rossettis were precocious, and in her teens Christina blossomed into an authoress. Her early efforts were printed at her grandfather's press for private circulation, and the lictle. book • that contains them .is (amongst. Pre-Raphaelites and ex-Pre-Raphaelites) one of the rarest and most precious literary curios. When the Germ was started Miss Rossetti contributed some beautiful lyrics thereto, but the Pre-Raphaelite magazine had too limited a circulation for them to attract general notice. In 1862, however, appeared " Goblin Market," which established Christina Rossetti's reputation and proved her one of our rarest songsters. Both this work and " The Prince's Progress" were illustrated by Dante Gabriele, and first editions now command their weight in silver.

In appearance, Christina Rossetti in girlhood resembled the ideal "blessed damozel." She radiated,peace and purity indescribable. Her brother painted her again and again, but his best portrait as well as his masterpiece is the »world famous " The Girlhood of the Virgin," engravings of which are common and sure - to be familiar to you. The face of tiie I virgin is pae and ascetic, uniting.the

simplicity pf refined girlhood with th« individuality of approaching womanhood. Her long fair hair sweeps over her |. shoulders past her waist. The face is an % | exact likeness of; Christina, but her hair 7 was brown and hot fair as in, the picture. |f A. Complete'edition of Miss Rossetti's I poems came out in 1890,; and can be. / obtained for a.few shillings. '",•': "In the extremely rare gift of songwritingj" wrote Mr-Edmund Gosse some time ago, " Miss.Bossetti has been singularly successful/ Of the poets of our time she stands next to Lord Tennyson in this branch of the art, in the spontaneous and .complete quality of her Ueder, and in their propriety for the purpose of being sung." The same critic points out a peculiarity in her sonnets, which must, indeed, commend themselves to all judges, that many of them are objective; and he declares that as a religious. poet of our time she had no rival but Cardinal Newman—" she is'the sister of George Herbert; she is of the family of -Crashaw, of Vaughan, of Wither." "We must find space for one little poem, which has a pathetic interest now : When I am dead, my dearest, ; Sing np sad'songs for me; ."'> Plant thou no roses at my head, No shady cypress tree; Be the green grass above me •' With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shallnot'feelthe rain; 'V I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain ; And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set,» Haply I may remember, And haply may forget. Miss Rossetti of =late years lived the life of a recluse. That elder sister of hers, Maria Francesca,' the Dante student, who entered a sisterhood, could scarce have lived more secluded from the world. Yet the poetess was born in London, and always lived in London. When Mr Wil-.-JLacvßossetti married the daughter.of Mr Madox Brown, some twenty years ago, the poetess and her mother removed to 30, TorringfcpnjSquare. It was in this house that Miss Epssetti, bereaved one by one of her mother and her mother's two sisters, ended life's little span.

SOBER ENGLAND. There areV said some wise man, three classes of 'lies:—Lies, lies, and statistics. Truly.-.figures can be twisted to prove anything, and a certain Mr A. I. Mott, the annual trade organ of the liquor interest, has made them prove that of all: European countries Old England is the soberest;. He does this by reducing every country's beverage to a common term of alcoholic, strength. Thus though in the United Kingdom the average consumption per head is equal to 30 gallons of beer, 1 gallon of spirits and -|- gallon of wine, the consumption is reduced by Mr Mott's method to 4 gallons of proof spirit. In Prance, 18 gallons of wine, If gallons of spirits, 8 gallons of cider and 5 of beer is the average per head per annum, which on Mott's principle makes Froggy a six-gallon proof spirit drinker. The figures for Germany seem to indicate that Mr Mott has made

some mistake. He puts the beer consumption down at only 27 gallons per head, but gives 2£ of spirit and 2 of wme, which total is equivalent to a national consumption of gallons per head per annum. Belgium figures boldly as a " boosy " counfay, with 40 gallons of beer, 2 gallons of spirit and 4 gallons of wine, or 6 gallons of proof spirit per head. Austria on the same line of reckoning conies out with the decent figure of 4£ gallons, Italy 4£, Norway, Holland and Sweden from 4 to 6, and Russia about the same. The United States, however, is» by far the lowest of the lot, for 14 gallons of beer and: 1.1- 10th gallons of spirit is the average Yankee's drink per annum. Mr Mott does not claim any particular accuracy for his figures, nor do I think they would stand close examination. It is against all accepted notions to put forward the British people as the lightest drinkers in Europe. "Drink statistics" are always misleading in that no allowance is ever made for the varying proportion of adults to the total population in different countries. If the statistics were analysed on the basis of adult population, i.e., persons above eighteen years of age, the Old Country would show up much worse than, say, France.

LONDON STREET DANGERS. Last winter the London correspondent of a well-read New Zealand journal narrowly escaped annihilation at the hands of a huge chimney pot which had been disturbed by a strong easterly gale. The missile just shaved his shoulder and smashed into a thousand little bits on the curbstone his foot had left half a second before. A little later he had the equally unpleasant experience with a broken telegraph wire, and began to seriously consider whether life in London wa3 worth living. Just at present another correspondent is pluming himself on being a very lucky man, for by the merest accident he escaped being a victim to a subterranean explosion which occurred in the Euston road about midnight last Saturday. What he was doing abroad at such an hour is not an important point in the story. He was walking along the pavement when he espied a selection of " unfortunates," and to avoid their attention crossed the street. He had barely set foot on the opposite curb when a terrific report occurred, and the air was filled with pieces of metal and stones, none of which luckily touched his person. Recovering from the shock the pressman soon gauged the narrowness of his escape, for the pavement which he had left but ten or twenty seconds before was torn up for fully twenty yards, and two persons lay apparently senseless on the road. Apparently the cause of the catastrophe was that an electric spark generated in the wrong place came into contact with an escape of gas, for at the place wrecked the ga3 main and the electric lighting wire are laid close "together. The two injured men were not seriously hurt luckily, but had the explosion occurred earlier the consequences might have been very serious, for Euston road is a main and busy thoroughfare. This is the second gas-cum-electric light explosion that has occurred within a few weeks in London, and one begins to realise that a walk round town means a walk over

mined ground nowadays. The overhead dangers are nothing compared to those lurking under our well-kept pavements.

HALF-HANGED PEOPLE. Stories of men who have suryived hanging are common enough. But they are mostly traceable to an American source and when inquired into have a nebulous surrounding. It is said that " hanging and wiving go by destiny." There is, at any rate, this similarity between them, that most men only try the experiment once. The other day, however, the Saturday Review retold an extraordinary story, under the heading of " Half-hanged People," which was originally published in Wesley's Arminian Magazine. A young man, on a journey to his brother, put up at a crowded inn, and shared a room with a merchant who had been seen counting out his money. Having occasion to use a knife, he borrowed one from the merchant. On returning to his room the merchant had disappeared. Thinking nothing serious had happened the young man-weiit" to sleep, rose early and walked to his brother's house, where he was arrested in the afternoon for murdering the merchant The knife was found in his pocket, and between the blade and handle was a guinea of William and Mary. The merchant's empty bed at the inn was stained with blood, but the body was nowhere to be found. On circumstantial evidence alone the young man was condemned for murder and hanged in chains on his brother's farm. Later on a peasant, observed that the body moved; it was taken down, revived, and the young man fled to sea, for fear of a second and more effectual hanging. Captured by Spaniards in South America he rose to become warder of a gaol, and while in that capacity recognised among a party of English prisoners the merchant for whose supposed murder he had suffered. While the young man was absent in the garden, the merchant discovered that he was bleeding from a vein which had been opened that day. Hurrying in the dark to a surgeon, he was seized by a press gang, put on board a ship of war, where he served for several years, bu f . was taken by the Spaniards and lodged in the prison in South America over which was the man who had been hanged for his murder.