TOPICS OF THE DAY. A Gossip About Things in General. BY THE AUCKLAND "STAR'S" LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 110, 11 July 1885, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY. A Gossip About Things in General. BY THE AUCKLAND "STAR'S" LONDON C ORRESPONDENT.

London, May 20. But for the east wind, which has returned at an inopportune moment, London would now be brightor and livelier than it has been for several seasons past. Last year nearly all the great houses were closed be" cause of the Duk© of Albany's death. This summer the leaders of society are revenging themselves by extra brilliance and splendour. Lady Aberganenny'a ball the other night was, it is on all hands allowed, the most gorgeous affair since the famous ffite of the Blue 3 in ISS3. The Prince and Princess of Wales came early and left late, and the company was "remarkably select," so select, in fact, that about 800 or 900 persons are burning with indignation because they were not asked. Invitations are out for two State concerts and one State ball at Buckingham Palace during June. The last drawing room of the season was held yesterday. On the 7th the presentations were very numerous. I expected to see the names of the Olivers and Halls on the list, but on dit that Lady Derby, who usually makes colonial presentations, was unable at the last moment to attend. The marriage of the Princess Beatrice will be a very quiet affair. iJireat pressure was brought to bear on the Queen in Germany with a view to persuading her to at least postpone the match. The Princess, however, possesses a will of her own, and has told both the Crown Princes of Germany and the Piince of Wales that even though she may have to forego ever setting foot in Germany, she means to marry Prince Henry, and what's more, to have him duly respected. The recurrence of the east wind has killed two remarkable yet widely different men — Lord Dudley and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The Earl had beon insane for the last six years, and will not in consequence be greatly missed by " society," but the death of the "King of Wales " (as Sir Watkin was called) removes the most popular and influential landowner of the principality. Lord Dudley succocded to his vast iron and coal properties when only ninoteen, but did not " come of age " till he was twenty-five Before this his trustees paid £900,000 for Witley Abbey, till then the family seat of the Foleys. Lord Dudley spent a fortune beautifying and enlarging the place, and crammed it with priceless pictures and curios. During the "coal panic " of about a dozen years ago, the income of the Earl's mining estates reached a fabulous total. He dpentroyally,however,andforsomeyearspa3fc it has been common gossip that the family were embarrassed. Lord Dudley didn't care a straw about racing, but it was his fancy to startle the ring at Ascot or Epsom now and again by appearing to wager a mammoth amount upon some presumed certainty. Thus at Epsom in 1875 he laid 7,000 to 4,000 on Lord Falinouth's pair for the Oaks, and later on at Ascot 10,000 to 5,000 on Doncaster for the Gold Cup. Both bets resulted in his favour, but he was less lucky when he laid 9,000 to 4,000 on Macgregor for the Derby, and 6,000 to 1,000 on Petrarch for a biennial at Ascot in 1876. The last-named was a frightful " boil-over," and, I fancy, cured His Lordship of " certain tieß. " Anyhow, I never heard of him making a bet afterwards. Lady Dudley was for many years the u queen of beauty " par excellence of London society. Evon now there are few who can approach her. The Earl idolised his wife, and she repaid him with the most devoted selfsaciifice, nursing him through his declining years with unremitting care, and giving up " society " without a murmur, Twice a day, in fine weather, the Dudley landau, drawn by two splendid bays, might be seen turning out of Park Lane into Piccadilly— Lady Dudley, pale and stately, seated beside a mass of rugs and sables surmounted by a well-known curly-brimmed hat, which even to his dying day the great iron lord insisted upon wearing when "taking the air." The death of an unfortunate little boy from ill-treatment at King's College has awakened people to the fact that bullying in schools still exists ; in my opinion nothing will ever completely Btamp it out. The fault lies not so much with the boys as with parents, who send weakly lads with delicate constitution? to live amongst brawling, lusty hobble -de-hoy b, several years older than themselves. A thump on the baok

,T7ill do an ordinary, healthy lad very little harm when delivered by a fellow of his own size ; but if he be a sir all, soft-boned child, and the blows are given by a youth of 17 or 18, one can't wonder at disastrous results. The newspapers -are all crying out that the 1 boys should be carefully watched by a master during play-hours. I don't think so. Systems -of espionage in schools seldom answer. The plain truth is, that certain boys are allowed to stay far too long at school. Ignorance ought not be considered. The more backward, the more stupid, and the more loutish a lad is at 17 or 18, the more imperative the necessity for clearing him out. Bright, clever boys hardly ever bully. They have neither time nor inclination to be cruel. There are some wonderful pictures in the Royal Academy this year. Leigh! on, Millais, Riviere, Tadema, and Orchardson are all at their best. Orchardson's historic " Salon of Mdme. Rdcamier" has so far attracted the biggest crowds It is a deeply interesting painting, with but one fault— the famous salon is not crowded enough, nor sparkling enough. The company may be illustrious, but they are, many of them, unmistakeably bored. Mdme. R<scamier herself lounges back upon a yellow sofa, her hair is golden red, her dress white, and her head is projected agaiost a crimson curtain. Many of the individual figures are excellent. Talleyrand, with his massive forehead ; Bernadotte, in uniform, iean ; ng forward with animated gesture ; the pale chiselled face of the Duke de Montmorency laying down the law ; Metternich, sly and cunning, waiting to interrupt. Millais's c/ie/ d'tvuvre is a portrait of the Lady Peggy Primrose, Lord Rosebery's little J daughter. None of the many delightful children the artist has painted surpasses this one. Sir Frederick Leighton contributes a companion portrait of Lady Sibyl Primrose, an elder sister about nine years, but she seems a stiff prim child beside the quaint little Peggy. Buton Riviere, as usual, has several greai animal pictures, the greatest representing a terrific fight for a lamb between a wolf and an eagle on the side of a precipice. This is a splendid piece of sombre tragedy, and when engraved should be as popular as " .Daniel in the Lion's Den." Leigh ton's principal work is an .elaborate allegorical frieze, "Music" j Tildes' 3, a group of Venetian girls laughing and drinking tea ; Alma Tadema'a, " a Reading from Homer," a young Greek reading from M.P. to a group of lada scantily clad in furd, and girls in white and blue— garments garlanded, They all sit on a marble terrace overlooking the sapphire sea. So far, the Inventions Exhibition has not interfered materially with the theatres. It is an instructive show, but less attractive than the Healtheries. The machines for making jam, lollipops, mustard, and asrated waters were the centres of popular interest last year. They are now replaced by printing presses, newspaper-folders, and the various processes for producing coloured illustrations, etchings, photographs, stereos, electros, and steel engravings. The "Illustrated News" and "Graphic" exhibit the machines which are working off the big pictures for their coming Christmas num bers, and there is a lovely " Tit Bits " folder— quite the most perfect of the kind 1 have ever seen. The vast central has been entirely given over to pianos, of which there must be upwards of a thousand exhibited. The finest instruments are, in my humble opinion, those shown by Brinttnead, Stein way, of New York, and a German firm, the name of which has slipped my memory. Steinway's 200-guinea "grand" will, it is anticipated, take the gold medal. " Watchmaking by machinery," the exhibit of the Waltnam Watch Company (who have a score of persons at work) is one of the most ambitious stalls. You can't really see much that ib going on, but, as the " 'cute Yankee" who runs the display for the Company says, "it looks a lot." The railway, mining, and engineering patents take up a lot of room, but are naturally of little interest to the community at large. Men's dress changes every season slightly, and not always for the better. Last year, par exemple, "masher" collars with white made-up ties of muslin or linen were all the rage. This summer it is no longer chic to wear a stand-up collar unless dogs-eared, and a made-up tie would be considered the height of philistinism. Scarves of white or very pale cream ribbed silk now replace the muslin and linen. They are tied in a sailor's knot and pierced below the loop with the tiniest of single pearl pins. It is most important, please note, to put the pin in below the loop and to take care it is a very small piece of jewellery, i.e., about a quarter the size of an ordinary breast-pin. If you wore to pierce the knot or to use a common gold breast - pin, you would show an ignorance of "form" from which even the most good-natured "old chappie" of your acquaintance would recoil aghast. Sack coats, never possible in London, are now going out of fashion even in the provinces. The tendency is towards darker suitings than have been worn for some years. Men are beginning to realise that they never !ook so comely as when decently clothed in a well-cut black morning coat. Stripes once more reign supreme in trouserings. A few stalwart people like Sir J ohn Ashley and the Duke of Portland stick to the large checks temporarily popular last season; but they are generally voted ugly. If you see a man (under 50) in a frock coat you may be sure he is either an American or Australian — the former for choice. Americans, too, have a penchant for that shiny black cloth which is so abominable, save in evening clothes or on the back of a parson, no London tailor would dare to make a layman a coat of such a material. His reputation would be damned eternally. The sudden death of poor Fargus (Hugh Con way), just at the moment when long years of hard work and disappointment were crowned with success, is terribly sad. He caught typhoid fever whilst enjoying a brief holiday on the Riviera, and had not constitution enough to rally from the after effects. The finished work left behind includes " A Family Affair " and a story for Arrowsmith's next annual. Personally, Fargus appeared a most prosaic personage —a Bristol merchant from the crown of his Bemi-bald head to the tip of his well-brushed boot. Only those who knew him most intimately suspected hia penchant for literature. Even they were electrified when it leaked out that he was the author of " Called Back." Anstey, of "Vice Versa" fame, has, I hear, a shilling brochure in hand, called " A Painted Venus," for which the publishers anticipate a big success, and Macluren Cobban, whose " Cure of Souls " sold fairly well some years ago, announces a novelette entitled " Tinted Vapours." Several other shilling reprints are either out or announced, but 1 shouldn't like to advise anyone to invest in them. They mostly represent trashy novels which failed in three volumes. "From Post to Finish," the best racing novel that Hamley Smart has written since "Bound to Win," is just published in the six-shilling form. "Judith Shakespeare," Black's last and worst novel, can also be had now for this sum. Amongst the new two shilling re-issues I can recommend "Val Strange," by D. C. Murray; " Valerie's Fate," by Mrs Alexander j and " Out of Eden," by Dora Russell.