HOME GOSSIP.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1792, 30 September 1874, Page 2

HOME GOSSIP.

(prom our own cobbespondent.)

London, June 17th, 1874.

You will have heard before this reaches you that our amiable neighbors have been having a slight bubbling up of their national vivacity—not, we hope, forerunning any more serious exhibition. You will know how " The Assembly," on the occasion of an important discussion, yelled, hooted, clenched fists, stamped and howled, according to custom; and how, not prudently content like Mr. Pluck with " verbal smifflication," one " honorable gentleman," to use our own parliamentary phrase, followed and assaulted another " honorable gentleman," and came to grief accordingly. All you will be discussing; but, in tke name of eccentricity, guess of what other person or persons in old Europe except France or a Frenchman could one have expected to hear of an indiscreet display of "vivacity?" Do you give it up ? Well, it seems, we are informed on the best authority, that the late illness of the Pope was due to what a French correspondent calls a " vivacity." It seems His Holiness walked in the sunshine, and not finding his attendant at hand with his cloak, when he wished to re-enter his palace, he walked in without it, sat in the cool shade, and got catarrh accordingly; He was reported dead ; but has now nearly recovered.

We have been from drought here for several weeks, and for the last week it has been the worst sort of drought —a cold one. Bitter east wind, blasting and shrivelling up all vegetables that had defied the sun and the heat. The consequence is that vegetables are at a premium, and fruit is nowhere ; such stunted grass* as exists is making itself into hay, and the creeping things are as the sand on the sea shore. The. "rose shoves were splendid ; never was the flower seen, in all its varieties, in greater perfection than this year; but these favorites were cared for at any expense of time and money : in the gardens on which so much cash and labour canaot be

spent, the green fly has nearly destroyed leaf and blossom alike.

Balfe's posthumous opera "II Talis^ mano "is now before tlie public. It has been performed twice, each time, of course, with Madame Nilg3ou as prima donna. As was to be expected, the musical critics are divided; but, without pretending to any .personal ability to judge of its merits, it may be said («uch opinion being founded on its general reception by both, critics and public) that it is good, but not in the superlative degree; likely to hold its place among favorite operas, but not to be a first favorite. Asa pendent to ths gossip which preceded Madame Nilssoh?s appearance this season at Drury Lane, we are having a good deal of gossip concerning her non-appearance at Court entertainments. By command of Her Majesty there was a concert at Buckingham Palace some eight or ten days, ago, at which the services of all the performers at Drury Lane were put into requisition except Madame Nilsson's. Beport sayg that in the beginning of this lady's career Her. Majesty once commanded her attendance for a Court concert, bu^she declined to appear on account of l&Kng made another engagement. Whether the lady was not right in refusing to break through an engagement even at a royal command, or whether she interpreted her duty in this respect too strictly; whether she was uncourteous in her refusal, or royalty exigeant in its demands'; or whether the whole circumstance be an imaginary one, who shall say. Like that undoubted authority who could tell exactly where the immaculate spinster lady's " twins had been put out to nurse " there are of course, half a dozen authorities, at least, in every social circle here, who repeat correctly the words in which Madame Nilsson expressed her refusal; and add, with at least equal correctness, the royal comment thereon. That this embodied the renunciation, 'never more be officer of mine," without the mollifying admission " I love thea well" is not pitching the language quite as strong, by any means, as these well-informed persons are "quite aware " it was ; but if they have not, we have some limit in our Gossip even where it is only royalty that is concerned. Meantime, however, one fact there is; Madame Nilsson did not perform at Her Majesty's concert; and it is also a fact that this story which is'now being talked of so much is not an on dit of this year's; it was talked of last season also.

It is a very pleasant thing to know that notwithstanding the .■ " envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness " raging among us here upon church inalferifwy present—notwithstanding the fierceness of/ the battle being waged concerning " pub-^ lie service celebration,", and its adjuncts! church decoration, and, what we may call V clergy decoration, " one touch of natuw" f can still make not only all the worljlj but all churchmen kin. When thY! '• winner of the Derby—George Frederick 4 —with his trainer returned: to his stable ■ in his native parish ot Wroughton, near Swindon, we are told, that beside brass bands and bunting displayed to welcome him, the church bells were set ringing; and not the most indignant writer or speaker oh either side of the churbh. question, of the many church questions, now agitating us, has even enquired i whether such a proceeding was strictly orthodox. For my own part I don't profess to know whether the bells of a church, are under ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; still less, whethtr, being so, the priest or parson may use them for other purposes than the celebration of some event connected with or supposed to be connected with the service of the church, as by law established—such, for instance as the coming of age of an orthodox heir to an estate; 'but I think we all of us know by this time; that had any rampant pro-Boman High Church priest set them ringing on such an occasion as the recovery of the Pope, for instance, we should have heard protests enough from all the Low Church parsons. Also, had one, mure charitable than the rest of these: Low Church parsons, had them tolled in sorrowful respect to the memory of a deceased Nonconformist brother, 'we should have heard more than enough from priests. But a horse of our parish has won the Derby. That alters the matter. Long live all our English Hounhyms, lay and clerical. Let us shake hands—priests, parsons, trainers, jockies, '.book-makers, yea, blacklegs and all. Nothing or nobody, we are aware, was ever so black as it or he has been painted. Not that I, humble body, mean "to go for to try* to explode or even reform horse racing. But we know what we know, and should not care to be aware that our pet parson or our pet priest were very active within the enclosure; that his " acts of vivacity " were very conspicuous at the "weighing." That most urbane among literary men, Mr. Buskin, has been giving us a specimen of his amenity lately. The convenor of the Glasgow Athenaeum Committee wrote to request him to deliver a course,of lectures at that institution, which request Mr. Buskin declined to accede to, as, no doubt, he had a perfect right; but wbafc right 1 Mr. Buskin had to insult the GU« gow Athenaeum Committee, and indeeu the public of Glasgow generally, by an inferential accusation of ignorance, idleness, frivolity; and a desire for display of superficial acquirement is best known to himself. That Mr. Euskin should take occasion to vaunt himself (also mferentially) as the profoundest thinker, and the most brilliant and powerful "writer of the pre-. sent day, or indeed any day, is quite consistent with Mr. Buskin; but really we, the public, who do read books—perhaps not Mr. Buskin's books as often as Mr. Buskin thinks—and like to hear, lectures?— perhaps other lectures as well as Mr^ Kuskin's, or better—must protest against being told that we are too lazy, to learn for ourselves. That we want to have Mr* Buskin's wisdom and Mr. Kuskin's knowledge "kneaded into the smallest possible

pills, and administered to us in homoeopathic doses;" that we want to be instructed by " fireworking, stnoothdowncurry, and strawberry-ice and milk-punch altogether lectures." Still less are we inclined to put up with being told that "the miserable death of poor Dickens, when he might have been writing blessed books till he was eighty but for the pestiferous demands of the mob, is a very solemn warring to us all if we would take it;" "us all" meaning, according to Mr. Buskin, men like Mr. Buskin, who should not allow themselves to be sacrificed to us all, .the public ; according to Mr. Buskin " a pestiferous mob." In plain prose "the pestiferous mob " paid Mr. Dickens very weir for his lectures, and the money of "the pestiferous mob" was very acceptable to Mr. Dickens. Whether our great novelist did not in. some degree sacrifice his dignity by becoming an itinerant lecturer is merely a matter of difference of taste; but that he, in his letters, displays an inordinate vanity, and a most silly elation at the favor with which lie was received, is a matter of fact which Mr. Buskin cannot but remember; tkd although he might be excused for ot repeating it to the disadvantage of his deceased friend, it might have moderated his righteous indignation towards " the pestiferous mob.'' Our collections on Hospital Sunday (last Sunday) have, together with the Mansion House collection, amounted to £9000; the sum collected in one of our suburban churches—St. Jude's, South Kensington—being among the largest; the collections in the Jewish synagogues were of course made on the Saturday previous, the Jewish Sabbath, when Dr. Adler, the great Jewish preacher here, gave a most powerful and eloquent sermon.