LONDON GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 9

LONDON GOSSIP.

From Our Special Correspondent

A WEEK OF DEATHS. London, March 27

This lias been a week of serious losses to English speaking people all the world over. It began with the passing away of two renowned veterans, both of whom lived unusually long, ami leave imperishable “ footprints on the sands of time.” Archdeacon Denison was one of the last of the old race of ecclesiastical fighters, and perhaps the doughtiest warrior of them ail. George Richmond, R.A., was thirty years igo nearly as famous a painter as his son, W, B. Rich* mend, It. A., is to-day. But neither of these celebrities, though mourned by countless friends, leave the same ache in the pub'ic heart as Judge Thomas Hughes, Q. 0., who expired somewhat unexpectedly a few hours later. 11 Tom Brown is dead ” we said to each ether, and felt a strange personal paug. It was not the eminent Q.C., the strenuous Christian socialist, tho sturdy coloniser, the breezy raconteur, or tho impenitent Philistine wo mourned, though in ail these roles Mr Hughes made an emphatic mark, It was just Tom Brown. For three generations he has been the friend of almost all the lads in the Empire. They grew up in time, but he remained ever nineteen, One thinks of him not as he appeared in a later hook of Mr Hughes's, a melancholy prig at Oxford, but as the tall stripling, the captain of the school, lying on the grass at Rugby watching tho close of the cricket match on the last day of his final term.

“TOM BROWN.” The influence of such a book as “ Tom Brown’s Schooldays" on the life of the nation can hardly be over-rated. It usually catches a boy at his most sensitive period, and every l.nc is sweet and wholesome and bracing and true. In tho absolute truth of the story lies much of its potency. Tom Hughes went to Rugby when he was ten, and didn’t leave until he was nineteen. Arnold had consequently plenty of time to impregnate the lad with Christian chivalry and virility, and very thoroughly he did it. In return Mr Hughes immortalised the Doctor through a portrait which will live long after his ponderous tomes of divinity are forgotten. “ Tom Brown,” it i.s interesting to know, was written for the benefit of his eldest boy. “ Thinking over what I should like to say to him before he went to school,” says the author, “ I took to writing a story as the easiest way of bringing out what 1 wanted. It was done mainly in the long vacation of IS,Ki, but wasn't published till early in the next year, and made such a hit that the publishers soon betrayed the secret, and I became famous ” It was the only really noteworthy literary work he has left behind, though he has left a good deal. It has had an enormous popularity, having passed through at least fifty editions. ISABEL, LADY BURTON. Isabel, Lady Burton has not long survived her famous husband, Sir Richard Burton. In many ways she was almost as remarkable a woman as lie was a man. Her tall figure, clinging black draperies, mystic manner and deep contralto voice made up an impressive personality. Lady Burton had but one thought—her husband—and never talked of anything else. The idea that people could by any possibility ever have too much of such a subject never entered lier head. Sir

Richard and his wife were a unique pair. The most extraordinary of men had the good fortune to be mated to the most extraordinary of women, whose departure from (lie type was on the same lines as his own. Yet they were like in difference, and she always acknowledged him as her “earthly master.” A stay-at-home wife of the ordinary conventional pattern would never have suited Richard Burton. The gipsy blood in him made him a restless wanderer, and he wanted a helpmeet who could bring the comforts of home, as he estimated them, into an Arab tent. In this remarkable woman he found a friend, a counsellor, a companion of travel, and a literary executor. Her devotion to him, alive or dead, was a veritable passion. The story of her engagement to Burton is suitably romantic. It was, says the DailjNcxvs, “foretold” of course. To a woman of her mystical temperament and view of life that was almost a part of the ceremony. A gipsy woman wrote out her destiny in Romany. “ You will bear tho name of our tribe and be right proud of it. You will be as we are, but far greater than we. Your life is all wandering, change, and adventure. One soul in two bodies in life or death ; never long apart.” The proof seemed to be in the impossibility. The name then borne by the woman who was to be “ right proud ” of her union with one of the gipsy race was Aiundell, and the Arundells are of the oldest and proudest stock ir. England. But destiny kept the appointment. One day when she and her family were at Boulogne “the vision of her brain awakening ” came towards them. A PICTURE OF BURTON. " Ho was live feet eleven inches in height, very broad, thin and muscular, he ha 1 very dark hair, black, clearly defined sagacious eyebrows, a brown, weather-beaten complexion, straight Arab features, a determined looking mouth, and a chin nearly covered by an enormous moustache. I have since heard a very clever friend say that ‘ he had the brow of God, the jaw of a devil.’ But the most remarkable part of his appearance was two large, black, flashing eyes, with long lashes, that pierced you through and through. He looked at me as though lie read me through and through in a moment, and started a little. I was completely magnetised, and when we had got a little distance away I tamed to my sister and whispered to her, ‘ That man will marry me.’ ” All that followed was worthy of this opening. He made the first advances by chalking up on the wall, “ May 1 speak to you ?” considerately leaving the chalk hard by for an answer. It was unpropitious at first: “ No, mother will be angry,” but this was only another way of

fession “ The moment I saw his brigand, dare-devil look, I set him up as an idol, and determined he was the only man I would ever marry.”

After many obstacles the pair were permitted to become engaged. But even now Miss Arundell had to wait. The passion for travel seized him once more, and in the strangest way. He went off without a word of warning, sending only his apparition to take learo of her as she lay in bed. “ Goodbye, my poor child,” said the astral double, “ray time is up and I have gone. But do not grieve, I shall be back in less than three years and I am your destiny.” He came ba-k to claim her in due time, much as Alonzo came back from the dead. “He had had twenty-one attacks of fever, had Been partially paralysed and partially blind. He was a mere skeleton, with brown yellow skin hanging in lags, his eyes protruding, and his lips drawn away from his teeth Never did I feel the strength of my love as then.” MARRIED LIFE. The marriage came at last. Thereafter Lady Burton was with him in Brazil, in Syria, in Trieste, helping him in nil his work, and finding time to write for herself on “The Inner Life of Syria,” on Arabia, Egypt, and India, and on many other subjects of the kind. At Trieste he settled down at last in the Consulate, with the solace of occasional trips to England, and runs, in one instance, as far as India, just to stretch IPs legs. Gordon tried to lure him back to adventure again After that, hero became Governor of the Soudan he wrote to Burton, “ You and I arc the only two men fit to govern the Soudan ; if one dies tho other will he left. I will keep the Soudan, you lake Darfur, and I will give you £SOOO a year if you will tl row up Trieste.” “My dear Gordon,” was (.he substance of Burton’s reply, “you and I are too much alike. I could not serve under you nor you under me. I do not look upon the Soudan as a lasting thing.” Absit omen as to the last words, At Trieste, Burton completed his monumental unexpurgated edition of the “ Arabian Nights.” lie also left behind an equally frank version of “ The Perfumed Garden,” a volume of erotics of such cerulean tint that not even Lady Burton’s anxiety to assist “conscientious scholars of Arabic” could induce her to print it. Bho refused 6000 guineas for the MSS., and—burnt it.

THE EARLY RISING LUNATIC. The voice of the sluggard would no longer complain, “ Y'ou have waked mo too soon, I must slumber again,” if Dr Holden Talcott were permitted to re-arrange our industrial system. Dr Talcott, who superintends a State asylum in New York, and is said to be one of tho most eminent specialists in lunacy, has just been declaring that early rising is a most prolific cause of insanity. He says: “ A peremptory command to get up when ono’s sleep is as yet unfinished is a command which grinds the soul, curdles tho blood, swells the spleen, destroys all good intentions, and disturbs for the entire day the mental activities of a boy just as the tornado disturbs and levels with advancing ruin a forest of mighty pines. To the habit of too early rising on the part of young men, we may, he adds, justly ascribe many cases of early insanity, of melancholia and of abject dementia. The free and lazy savage gets up when he feels ready, and rarely or never becomes insane.” In further proof of his assertion, Dr Talcott points out tho larger percentage of lunacy among country people as compared with professional men. The latter, almost without exception, get up late in the morning, whereas our manual labourers, in city and country, all leave their beds long before they should. Generally in winter they rise before day-break. A radical change should be wrought in our industrial system, Dr Talcott concluded, so that our working men and women would not be compelled to get up as they do to-day before they have had a decent night's rest. The early morning hours, when everything is still, are peculiarly fitted for sleep, and it is a grots violation of all the laws of nature to tear human brains out, of the sound rest they enjoy at this time.” An opinion which, we doubt not, many persons will most heartily endorse.

THE LOUSES’ SILVER WEDDINJ. Saturday last was the silver wedding day of the Princess Louiso and the Marquis of Lome. It is curious to remember what a furore of exultation and Uniou-Jackcry the announcement of their engagement caused. An English nobleman, cried the populace in 1871, must be a far more suitable match than a paltry German Prince. Hurrah for | the Highland thistle, and down with the j Teutonic sausage. But the Royal Family and ! the Courts of Eer-q-e viewed the situation ! very differently. ' o I him the muniage 1 with tie: Marquis of Rome (a commoner with a mere courtesy title) was a dreadful mesalliance, and no one could imagine why the Queen gave her consent. The story oftenest repeated is that Princess Louise fell in love as a young git! with the handsome and courtly clergyman, Mr Duckworth, then employed aa tutor to one of her brothers. The attachment was reciprocated and the sternest measures had to be resorted to in order to separate the couple, The Princess thereafter refused to look at the foreign eligibles submitted to her from time to time matrimonially, and announced her intention of becoming an old maid. She was 23 years of age when Lord Lome came to Court. He stayed an autumn at Balmoral, and ILR.H. showed some partiality for him. “For goodness sake let Louise many him,” the Queen’s chief crony and adviser, Lady Ely, is reported to have. said. “He's not a good match, but lie’s not quite impossible. Remember Duckworth.” The Queen did remember, and Lord Lome received an intimation that he might propose. The sequel is told by the Queen herself, under date Balmoral, October 3, 1870, and runs “This j was an eventful day ! Our dear Louise was engaged to Lord Lome. The event took place during a walk from the Glassalt Shicl to the Dhu Loch. She had gone there with Miilriliiililii

Beatrice and the Hon. Mrs Ponsonby to Pannanich Wells. . . We got home by seven. Louise, who returned some time after we did, told me that Lome bad spoken of his devotion to her and proposed to her, and that she had accepted him, knowing I would approve. Though I was not unprepared for this result, I felt painfully the thought of losing her. But I naturally gave my consent, and could only pray that she might be happy.” The Queen, months previously, had consulted Norman Macleod about the Luke of Argyll’s heir. “ Lie told me,” she wrote, “ what a very high opinion he had of Lord Lome ; how good, excellent and superior lie thought him in every way.” In February, 1871, the Queen opened Parliament in person, and on March 21st she appeared at the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquis, which was celebrated at St. George’s Chapel with pomp aud splendour. The bride was given away by her Royal mother. The marriage was very popular, one poet of Ihe day giving expression to tbc gene-rat feeling in the lines:

No strangely foreign title she assumes, No alien throne across the sea she tills, But dwells our own, our rativo rose that blooms, Among its native hills. A PATH NOT ALL ROSES. Nevertheless the union lias in many ways been tho reverse of successful. From the first the Royal Family snubbed Lord Lome, and he had neither the tact nor tho sunny nature which enabled Prince Henry of Battenbcrg to surmount similar prejudices. A story widely current in the early seventies was to the eff-.ct that at the first drawingroom after their marriage the Princess drove up to the entrance of Buckingham Palace, reserved on such occasions for Royalties only, and alighted. Lord Lome was following her, but an usher stopped him and intimated that not being a prince of the Blood ltoyal lie must seek the Ambassadors and entree people's door.

“ By whose orders,” asked tho Princess. “Those of the Prince of Wales” wa# the reply. The Princess nnd her husband re-entered the carriage and drove away. Contretemps of this sort frequently occurred. The Princess would not descend to Lord Lome’s rank, and couldn’t raise him to hers. Complex questions of precedence—a very solemn tiling to Royalties—were constantly arising. It was ail exceedingly painful. Lord Beaconsfield cut the gordian knot by sending the Lornes to Canada. The Marquis made an excellent Governor General, but the Princess soon tired of colonial ladies and colonial society, and would not let her husband take another Vice-Royalty when his term came to an end. On (lit his lordship would have jumped at either Victoria or New South Wales. Since then the Lornes have lived quietly in a corner of Kensington Palace. The Princess is a rather stout and sentimental lady of .-esthetic and artistic tastes. She is the special patron of painters and has Riven many rising men a helping hand. Lord Lome is literary. He writes essays, fiction and poetry. Some people, it is understood, read his books. I don’t, so can’t give an opinion on them.

ARCHDEACON DENISON. Archdeacon Denison, who died on Saturday morning last at the ripe old age of 90 years, was a brother of William Denison, GovernorGeneral of Australia, and of John Evelyn Denison, Speaker of the House of Commons, and first Viscount Ossington. Personally the reverend gentleman was beloved by all who knew him. Ecclesiastically he was for half a century the personification of the narrowest militant High Churchism and priestly domination. The claims he made on behalf of Mother Church were tremendous and woe betide the man who resisted them.

Mr Denison was presented to the living of East Brent in 1815, and filled it for 50 years. In 1853 Denison, who had forseveral years been examining chaplain to Dr Bagot, Bishop of Bath and Wells, rejected several candidates for ordination because they did not hold the High Church doctrine on the Sacraments. The Low Church party took notice of i his treatment of their friends, and a further misunderstanding arose between Denison and the Bishop. /- s Denison’s own doctrinal soundness was impugned, and as the Bishop was his personal friend, he resolved to change the ground of contention, and for that purpose preached three sermons in Wells Cathedral on the Heal Presence, and published them by way of challenge. Proceedings were commenced against him in the Diocesan Com I, in the name of the Rev. J. Ditcher, and in October, 1856, after long delays, tlie case was heard before Dr. Lushington. Denison was defended by Dr.

i’hilitnorc, Lis brother-in-law, and main tailird the doctrine, of his ■ etinon.s at W lls

villi the remit that judgment was pronounced depriving him ol his vicarage an 1 archdeaconry. The appeal was then made to the Court of the Province which reversed the judgment of the Diocesan Court upon a legal objection, and quashed the sentence of deprivation. Mr Ditcher carried the case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, but his appeal was rejected. Denison was taunted with having avoided the consequences of a judgment on the merits by urging a technical objection. He retorted that the Diocesan Court was “packed,” and that the whole proceedings were a “farce.” The day following his return to East Brent, after the conclusion of these legal proceedings, Denison sent to his neighbour and prosecutor, Mr Ditcher, to say that he should be thankful to resume the old friendly relations. The wish met with a cordial rejoinder, and the renewed friendship was maintained until Mr Ditcher’s death, seventeen years later, when Denison preached his funeral sermon. To mention the occasions on which Denison came forward after this in Church Unions, in Convocation, and elsewhere, to do battle for the extremist principles of Church authority, or to damage those whom he regarded as their antagonists, wotqd be to recount the ecclesiastical struggles of the period. He organized the successful action

Univeisity in 1805, He procured the vote of the Lower House of Convocation—thirtynine members voting with him in a House of sixty members, eighty-seven being absent —in condemnation of “ Essays and Reviews.” lie resisted the endowment of the Greek Professorship at Oxford, held by Mr Jowett, even after Dr Pusey had pronounced in favour of it, and he made public protest before his rustic parishioners at morning and evening prayer against tbc consecration of Dr. Temple as Bishop of Exeter. For a while he conducted The Church and State Review, but it only lived a few years ; as he explained, it was “too little abusive” to please the general public. At Christ Church, when he cot his First Class, Longley, the censor, had said of him Simpler- idc et mode sins jnvenis, and he appeared to think that the praise could not be forfeited From ihe foregoing sketch it might perhaps be inferred that Archdeacon Denison led a morose and unhappy life. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a man of great energy, which required an object, and he was not a student. He enjoyed activity, and even as Emerson said of Carlyle, “ seemed to enjoy his indignations.” His was not one of (hose sensitive minds which exall differences of conviction into grounds of enemity. His very dear friends were often persons who, like Charles Neate or Lord Lyttelton, greatly differed from him in opinion, and ho found pleasure in publicly acknowledging the kindness which ho received from staunch opponents. At homo he s| are 1 neither toil nor money for his parish. He instituted the parish harvest home in a form so acceptable that “ the East Brent ” model was imitated all over England. He wasja Splendid whist player, a good rider in his younger days, and a lively anccdotist. To know Denison only as a militant High Churchman was to miss some of the most essential features of his character. Apart from the professional prejudice which made his life a Quixotic enterprise he was one of kindest of men.