THE OPENING OF THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7927, 19 July 1887, Page 4

THE OPENING OF THE PEOPLE'S PALACE.

The Queen's progress from Paddington to Mile-End on the 11th May was Uio occasion of a demonstration oC loyalty and bunting such as has never been witnessed in this country. The road is seven miles long, and is the one direct and undeflecled artery passing through London. It was dressed in flags, festoons, and hangings from end to end, so as to be wholly beyond recognition. The Queen left Pitddington at 4 o'clock and was back there at half-past 7, having in themeantime driven 15 miles and taken part in three ceremonies, namely, the opening of the Queen's Hall in Uio People's Palace of Delight, the laying of the foundation stone of the new Technical Schools at the same place, and a visit to the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. Many royal and noble persons wore at the ceremony in the Queen's Hall, and also Madame Albani (Mrs Gye), who had come to sing "Homo, swcelhome." Mr Walter Besant, the novelist, wlio^jook "All Sorts and Conditions of Men gave birth and life to the idea which is embodied in " The People's Palace," was presented to the Queen and treated very graciously; but some comment has been made, in quarters which think it smart to criticise Koyal acts, on his not having been knighted, as was a city nobody, named John llogers Jennings, whose company (the Drapers) had given £20,000 to the scheme. Hut for a man so simple, retired, and famous as Walter Besant a knighthood would have been less of a satisfaction than a burden If a man is knighted his servants expect better wages, his wife better dresses, and his tradesmen larger orders. Like almost all brainworkers who want to live and not to die Besant has withdrawn almost wholly from London and society. If a stranger were to come iiere and look ont the addresses of those who, h* has been told,, constitute the intellectual giants of London, he would find the majority of them absent from the directory. They live in the suburbs or right away in the country. Life in town is too killing for imaginative workers. Dickens Thackeray, Jcrrold, and a host of others died untimely. Besant lives in far Hampstead. His works dealing much with the past times, the realms of fancy, and out-of-the-way aspects of character, he loses little by lacking touch with mere men and women of the day. Perhaps, however, it is from this sparing of themselves that he and other contemporary novelists fail to attain that fame and influence which their predecessors enjoyed. Besant is popular by comparison with others, but there is now no novelist in whom the world is interested as it was interested in Dickens and Thackeray. Henry James, the London American, interests London because the people he draws are not fashioned ont of his commonplace book or his second-hand library, but are men who have snubbed or patronised or bored him, and women who have made love to him in London drawingrooms or tried to borrow money from him in Italian hotels. They have all been alive; and have all rasped some nerve in his sensitive being. But as to the great ruck of novel writers, who turn out their book every four months, a circulating librarian once said to me, "We prefer the writers whose works have the least individuality, because we can send them to country subscribers over and over again without their perceiving that they have read them before." There is listle rage nowadays for lionising a novelist or any other pure litterateur, but what the author loses in personal face-to-face flattery he gains in the written adulation of distant correspondents: The Queen, although she has three times gone to Guildhall in state had not paid a visit to the Mansion House since her childhood, when she went there one day with her mother on the occasion a trip to the Tower. The corporation were delighted with the marked social honour thus done them, all the more so as they are waiting with nervousness the report of the committee which has been investigating the charges against them of spending the " city cash " in getting up bogus public meetings.