SYDNEY SIDE-LIGHTS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6678, 28 November 1908, Page 12

SYDNEY SIDE-LIGHTS

OFF TO THE HILL-TOPS. A COMING DIVORCE. MAN WHO TRIED TO SHOOT A DC EE. PRINCE’S LOVE AFFAIR. TREATED LIKE A BOTTLE-OH MAN. NEW U.S.S. LINER. A PARALYSINGLY BEAUTIFUL PERSON. ( (By Ida Sorel.) SYDNEY, November 21, Some poet—Pope, wasn’t it?—wrote an ode to the Goddess-of Dullness. There’s inspiration at present in Sydney for a bushel of odes to flatness. The Governors of the. various States have gone’, or are going, to their hill-tcip jreskU ences, and society here, and in Melbourne, is doing nothing, and doing’ it with no particular grace. Wo have had only a few hot days.' Sydney lias a name for heat that it does not deserve. Visitors feel the languor find inertia consequent on the blowing of tho nor’caster, which is a cool wind, but mois-ture-laden, and then cry out about tho Sydney heat. For real -heaj:, and bluebottle flies, and all sorts of crawling and winged things that try to roost in your ears .and who wriggle through your transparent. blouse, go to the mountain®. But because the heat there is of the dry variety, that’s where our people go in great numbers.

Only topic stirring tho society pool just now is a divorce about to be effected- And the interest in that is duo to th© fact that the tertium quid is a member of —well, of a club that fancies itself. Ho is not defending the suit", ns he desires to marry the lady who is the mother of five children. People think this aspect of the scandal rather romantic. If he would defend the suit his club would perhaps not fire him out of its membership.' As it is. he will, to a certainty, be fired, unless ho anticipates by resigning. Forty years ago this same club proposed to expel the late W, B. Dailey for taking up the defence at law of the poor lunatic O’Farrell for shooting at the Duke of Edinburgh, Dailey was at the time the most popular man. in Australia, and sixty of his fellow members prepared to resign their membership if the expulsion were effected. Th© club could not afford such a loss, and the Jingoes subsided.

Talkinpr of Dukes (nothing like keeping in high society!) Sydney is much concerned about the love affair of a royal duke who, for some months, was its idol—meaning the Prince of Abruzzi, first cousin of the King of Italy. He was her© in command of his man-o’-war craft some few years ago. Doubtless you Maorilanders also made his acquaintance, if not all of you in person, at least by sight. His lean, keen scholarly face, his lithe, erect, soldierly figure. his charming manner, took both men .and women, and more than any personal charm was th© fascination of his record as a scientist and traveller. And he is yet in the early thirties, and is enormously rich in his own right. 1 won’t soon forget him on th© lawn at Randwipk during a big race-meeting. "What charming ladies/’ he said to one of Sir Harry Rawson’s aides, "Will you present some to me.” And the littie aid© bustled around in tho throng, picking out the prettiest of the some bodies, young married women -and girls, and marching them up to H.R.H:, who smiled and talked to tho selected ones, while two of his elegant staff stood erect and unsmiling .as if on parade on either side of him. A compliment that from most men would geora. like laying it on with a trowel was transformed by his foreign grace and simplicity of manner into a natural and pleasing truth. He said and did, that which lie pleased, but he was never undignified or unequal to any emergency. If in an assembly he liked the appearance of a man or woman, ho requested the person to be presented, and if after some minutes he did not find him or her Informative or interesting he 'would.bow his dismissal. His eager, restless brain was always out after knowledge or seeking a fresn personality.

One afternoon' he was sitting with a coupie of his aides in the White Garden of the Australia, when a young woman, wearing a tailor-made get-up of white linen and a gossamer veil on an untrimmed hat, passed in on her way to a tea-table at the end of the Garden. Presently an aide came up to the tailor-made party, who is on the staff of a Sydney weekly paper, and. saluting, said: "iiis Highness the Duke of Abruzzi asks the pleasure of your presentation. to him. Your name; please?” Those may not have been the exact words, but that is what they signified. "Bring the . Duke here,” coolly and promptly replied the lady, "and he can have some tea with us,” In three minutes the Duke and the little x>arty at the tea/table were up to their brains in a discussion on tue overlanding cf cattle in Australia. How such a subject originated none of the group know to this day, but it can be made a picturesque topic, and for more than an hour the Duke questioned and listened <aa if his future living depended on his acquired knowledge of the .work. With rather questionable taste, one of the group, as the rqyal guest was preparing to lea ve, asked him, a® she indicated the presswoman—pointing at her'with a teaspoon—“ With all respect, sir, may X ask a question? Why did you wish to know Miss ? It couldn’t be her fatal beauty, for she had that motor veil on till your Highness joined us.” , To this the foreigner replied gravely: "I have never quite understood the word ‘fatal’ in connection with beauty, but since you use the word might not there bo a fatal beauty of figure as well as of face? The perfect figure attracts me as strongly as—as —the Antarctica used—” he ended suddenly and smiling, but the tribute was offered with such ease that the object of.it felt no. embarrassment.

On board his ship some days later he showed his new acquaintances his collection of Maoriland curios, and he actually carried ia little tiki for luck. One bit of greenstone had a face carved on it. The Duke thought it was "a high type of native face.” but I fancy someone had pulled his royal limb over ilhat curio. I’ll swear it was Mr T. E. Donne’s countenance.

Well, for _ months after the Duke’s departure Sydney boiled with curiosity and amazement over an amour of* this Admirable Crichton. A girl who had been a housemaid at a fashionable

boardinghouse hero. I saw her often in the stalls of a theatre. A stupidlooking girl with a pale face, large dark eye®, and a nondescript figure. "What is the attraction for a man like that?” Sydney used to ask. "All the ■men who know her acknowledge that she is as stupid a® she looks, and that she isn’t' pretcy.” When the Duke scut for the rpvi. and came as far no Aden to meet and later established her, not ill one. but in two flat® in town ami tea-side London, and took her touring amongst Ms ancestral properties in Italy, then Sydney asked the question again with greater emphasis. it was forthcoming from *a mutual friend (a man, of course) of the Duke and the damsel. "She treat® him as he has never been treated by a woman before. At Bridge she will lose her temper, and dash the cards in his face. At dinner she will hit him in the eye with her bread; if he makes any appeal to her intellect, of which she has none, she says: ‘Uh, shut your head/ or ’Give it a rest/ He never knew what it waw to 'be treated like cl bottle-oh man. and the experience fascinates him.”

But when I began this too-long yarn about Abruzzi I meant to refer only to Sydney’s interest in his engagement to Miss Elkins. It is probable that Senator Elkins, hearing of the Duke being such ‘‘hot stuff,” and not to be^trusted on the morganatic marriage lines, is tho real cause of the breaking-olf of the match. Perhaps ht'll come cut hero again to heal Uia (no doubt) oft-broken heart.

New Union S.S. liner Makura was the scene of a big luncheon party yesterday. About 2m) of our fattest citizens—ah men —ateoi a gorgeous menu, and the moot important of them said nice things about the new craft, which is bigger, a little, than the P. and O. China —and the future of trade with Canada. Gen-eral-manager Jackson, of tho Union S.b. Company, was in the chair. Amongst his remarks: "Whether tho cargo and passengers would be forthcoming they’ did not know, but it -was an anxious venture. There was a new Government now. and they hoped it would look on them favourably, as they employed, a great in umber of people, -and spoilt a large amount of money. Thore was 1 hot so very much left for the shareholders. Whatever subsidy they earned came mostly back to the fcltalo. In Now South .'Wales, alone his company had spent in tin? last twelve months over, .£500,000; of this £252,000 wai® spent at Sydney, £155,000 for Newcastle coal, and £3-4,000 on account of the Canadian line. They had spent over £83,000 on laibour in New South 'Wales. Of course they could look to immigration and tho expansion of Australia to increase the traffic on their line. Tho atn|osphere seemed to be clearing, aud Australia was becoming more attractive.”

In Melbourne the Government House lasted people are talking in awed whispers about th© gold plate that glow's on the Dudley 'Supper tables. Such quantities of it! Melbourne women don’t envy the Countess her gold plate and jewels as much as they do the fact that when she goes riding she does so escorted by as many a*3 five lovely men, members of th© G.-G.’s staff. Captain Rom© is a disappointment, so far as apx>earance goes. Ho looks a dust-man compared with one of the Australian (extra) aides—a paralysingly beautiful person, Colonel Legg© by name. This last-named must have some brains with his beauty, for he is the drawer-up of the Defence Scheme which has agitated Australia for the last year.