OUR ENGLISH LETTER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1202, 15 March 1895, Page 20

OUR ENGLISH LETTER.

From Our Special Correspondent. PERSONAL NOTES. London, February 1. Mr A. H. Leary,. the muchrrespected exMayor of Dunedin and director of the Otago Daily Times , arrived Home ten days ago on an important mission connected .with the conversion of the Dunedin municipal loan. Mr Leary . reached London just as the second “ cold snap ” of the winter set in, and was promptly laid up with compound catarrh, &c., which kept him in the house till Wednesday last. He then looked up sundry old friends and new acquaintances, including Mr C. RousMarten and your correspondent. Mr Leary, after the inevitable colonial custom, gravitated on landing to apartments in classic Bloomsbury, but his headquarters are at the National Liberal Club. The death is announced at Walreddon Manor, Tavistock, of a very old New Zealand identity, to wit, Dr Thomas Fisher erstwhile of Christchurch and Timaru, who passed away at the age of 75 on the 28th ulto. Dr Fisher had lived some time in England. He was well off, and did not require to practise, spending indeed an almost Arcadian existence on his beautiful Devonshire estate.

Mr Marriott Watson has deservedly the place of honour in the New Review for February, wherein he tells with admirable zest and—to use a favourite Scots Observer word —distinction a capital story • describing “ The Quandary of the Bishop.” This deals with an amusing interchange of amenities between a spiritual peer and a highwayman.. Of the latter it is to be hoped Mr Watson will let us hear .more. Dick Ryder is an entertaining rascal and an agreeable novelty in gentlemen, of the road. His adventures should be an improvement on the stereotyped proceedings of Turpin, DuVal and Co. Mr Walter. Sobarts, a young baritone, who appears from a fascinating collection of press notices to have wa?frtc4 with ac-

ceptance in most parts of Australia and New Zealand, is now in London. He gets, I imagine, a fair amount of employment at concerts in the suburbs and provinces, and an occasional show at the Crystal Palace and Queen’s Hall. Mr Robarts seems in good health. Rolf Boldrewood’s “ Sphinx of Eaglehawk ”is an entertaining short tale of the early days of Bendigo goldfield, in which we hear of the exciting adventures of a daring damsal who, to ;pull through some hard times, threw overboard the convenances and became barmaid at the Charlie Napier Hotel. The story forms the third volume of Macmillan’s new series of original 2s novelettes. You got your February’s Cassell’s Family Magazine via San Francisco, I suspect, and therefore probably know that it contains a description of poor Stevenson’s home at Samoa by Mr W. H. Triggs, of the Christchurch Press. Mr Triggs has naturally not much to tell us that is new on this well threshed-out subject, but he obtained from the novelist several of his own photos of Yai Lima, &c., which have now a special interest for us. Mr Stevenson must have taken to the New Zealand journalist, for I happen to know he was not usually complaisant to “interviewers.” From Americans, indeed, he fled promptly into the ( forest.- Not that this mattered much to those . enterprising people. When they couldn’t see Stevenson in the flesh, they drew liberally on their luxurious imaginations.