LONDON.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 4210, 5 June 1895, Page 6

LONDON.

[Fbom the Evening Stab's Uobrespondknt

London, April 19. The Master of Balliol was one day conversing on ethics. His friend propounded what he believed to be a difficult question. "Do you think," said he, "that a good man could ever look happy on the rack ?" " Well," replied Dr Jowett with a judicial air, " I think on the whole he might — that is, if he were a very good man and it were a very bad rack." I have quoted the foregoing because it seems singularly apropos of the attitude of the Press towards Oscar Wilde just now. Not content with complaining that Wilde looks miserable on the rack at the Police Court, they invite us to infer hia guilt from the fact. How they would have him look I cannot imagine. Even the most blameless of beings might be excused for displaying considerable emotion whilst listening to such infamous allegations as those of the self-confessed blackmailers Parker and Atkins. One would not hang a dog on the word of these unutterable vermin, and if the case rested on their depositions alone Wilde would.soon be free. But there are many other witnesses — hotelkeepers, chambermaids, landladies, and fellow- lodgers of Taylor's proteg4s — who are welding together a chain of circumstantial evidence which Sir Edward Clarke (who will conduct the defence) may find it impossible to destroy. Unless forced to do so by circumstances, it is not the intention of the Government to drag Lord Alfred Douglas into this unpleasant business, though the evidence shows him to have been present at most of Oscar's symposiums. The smart London tradesmen and hotelkeepers are even sadder than the aesthetes over the fall of the Apostle of Culture. He owed money everywhere, though earning a big income nowadays from his plays. But only a millionaire's resources would have stood such extravagance as his. A dinner at the Savoy seldom cost him less than £40, and I am told his small parties bill at the Holborn Viaduct Hotel for the three days concluding the Queensberry trial amounted to £150 odd. Three writs were found on him when he was arrested. A I'HILOSOPHIC MORAL. There is a philosophic moral to the Wilde case which some of us would do well not to overlook. Oscar was not always the combination of artist and brute he is to-day. Walter Pater was his evil penius. It was that accomplished stylist's gospel of epicureanism (carried to excess) which has landed him in the dock. Wilde's case is the natural and regular physiological result of a iiterary and aesthetic effort. It demonstrates the influence which the deviation of certain literary faculties in the direction of a refined sensualism can exercise over the intelligence and over the morals of men undoubtedly gifted. Fatal degeneration will ensue when intellectual effort is made the result, and not the principle, of sensations. Finally, for Heaven's sake don't let us be humbugs about this Wilde trial. Mr Jerome points out in his own pleasant fashion that, whilst everybody has been loudly eulogising the ' St. James's Gazette ' for not reporting the Wilde case, nobody has been observed reading that rigidly virtuous journal. It was just the same at the time of the ' Maiden Tribute.' We howled with horror at Mr Stead's filthy narrative, and eagerly bought every fresh issue of the 'Pall Mall Gazette' containing it. Moreover, Society will do well to remember that there may be such a thing as over-reticence. In our desire not to touch pitch and get defiled we decent people have speechlessly conspired together not to see the facts which have led at least to this esclandrt. In doing so we absolutely protected the gang. What Society now demands is the absolute extinction of the Oscarian cult. This can only be achieved by putting deadly fear into the hearts of two or three hundred well-known characters, and to manage the work efficiently a certain amount of publicity is imperatively necessary. TUE NEW SPEAKER. Perhaps the greatest compliment the House of Commons could have paid to the late Speaker was the seene — almost amounting to serious disorder — which occurred during the election of his successor. The Chair stood empty for barely two hour*, but that was quite long enough to emphasise the loss of the strong guiding hand. And here let me say a word or two regarding Mr Peel's farewell. Mr Lucy's account (which I sent you last week) does justice to its matter, but scarcely gives a fair idea of its admirable manner. The speech was, in the first place, judiciously brief, and couched in excellent taste and felicitous language. Its delivery was perfect. Mr Peel inherits from his father the beautiful and exquisitely modulated voice which enabled the repealer of the corn laws to — in the words of Disraeli — play with the House of Commons as on an old fiddle ; and this voice was never heard to greater advantage than in his valedictory address. The disturbance on Wednesday was due entirely to Mr Balfour, whose tact, temper, and self-control for once entirely gave way. Till the Tory leader, contrary to all precedent, intervened, the election of the new Speaker had progressed on conventional lines. Mr Whitbread proposed Mr Gully. And who, I hear some of you colonists ask, is Mr Whitbread 1 In the words of those two diametrically opposed authorities, " Tay Pay" O'Connor and the 'St. James's Gazette,' " probably the most respected man in the House." Liberals, Tories, Irishmen, and Freelances alike have long recognised his sterling worth and capabilities. Offered office on many occasions, he has always refused it, and eleven years ago the House would — but for the hon. member's slight deafness — have unanimously elected him Speaker. In appearance the personification of grave dignity, and blessed with a regularly gracious manner and considerable oratorical powers, Mr Whitbread yet seldom speaks. When he does his influence falls little, if ao all, short of a party leader's. I commend to your notice the simple, earnest, self-restrained sentences in which the veteran parliamentarian proposed Mr Gully. It could not possibly have been better done. Mr Augustine BirrelPs little speech was also in quite good taste, and Sir John Mowbray and Mr Wharton, in proposing Sir Matthew White Ridley, likewise showed to much advantage. Then the two candidates submitted themselves to the House, Mr Gully making the best speech and looking a more ideal Speaker than the stout and short Sir Matthew. Up to this point harmony had reigned, and what demon of mischief prompted Mr Balfour to defy precedent and interpose no one could imagine. His speech was so unlike him, too. He made no direct attack on Mr Gully, but managed to suggest he was an undesirable man for the post. That might have passed. When, however, the right honorable gentleman went on to accuse the Government of reducing the question of the Speakership to a party fight the Chamber rang with cries of " Courtney ! Courtney ! Courtney !" This of course signified that so far from having made a party business of the Speakership the Government had suggested the obviously suitable Mr Courtney — though a Liberal Unionist — for the post, and Mr Balfour himself had joined Mr Chamberlain in persuading that gentleman to withdraw. For once Mr Balfour was completely | knocked over, and — sat down. The cheers and howls which greeted Sir W. Harcourt'o

rising showed that the blood of the House was up, and quieter souls gazed with melancholy foreboding on the empty chair. Sir William was in great form, and danced a sort of break-down on the Opposition Leader. Mr Balfour's objections to Mr Gully were confuted out of the mouth of his own side. In the *Pall Mall Gazette 'of the previous night appeared an article by that clever young Tory Sir Herbert Maxwell, who showed conclusively that in 1884 Mr Peel was as unknown and as severely criticised by the Tories as Mr Gully is (or was) now. "It is," says "TayPay"(of whose description of what followed 1 must even at the risk of repetition quote a bit), " the peculiarity of an orator — and especially of an orator of the impressionable temperature of Sir William Harcourt — to rise with the rising tide, to grow stronger with strength, more successful with success. And soon it was felt that Sir William was about to make a weightier, stronger, even more emphatic attack on Mr Balfour. In other words, he was approaching the name of Mr Courtney. The reader will have already seen what a frightful opening Mr Balfour had left on this question, when he charged the Government with making the Speakership a party question by bringing forward one of their own followers. Who had made it a party question, asked Sir William Harcourt, with finger pointed at Mr Balfour — and in a loud and almost menacing voice — and with all the force of a pile-driver, giving the huge block of wood its last stroke home. The Chancellor felt all the passion he expressed and aroused ; for it is well known that he had put forward the candidature of Mr Courtney with great and almost desperate eagerness, and in spite of some opposition from his own friends. If Mr Courtney, who was not a supporter of the Government, had not been elected, whose was the responsibility. Again Sir William pointed at Mr Balfour ; and so fierce and loud, and prompt, was the storm of cheers that came up from the Liberals and the Irish that Sir William was unable more than once to end his sentences. All the sense of the ingratitude, the betrayal, the meanness with which Mr Courtney had been hustled out of the Speakership by the Tories came back to the memory of the House. Never was a man so deeply avenged, never was a mean intrigue so mercilessly exposed. Mr Chamberlain is always pale ; and in these later days he nearly always looks sour, depressed, baffled, uneasy. He was positively and palpably miserable during this exposure of — shall I call it an intrigue or a defeat ? — in which he has played so ignoble apart; and what must have added to his discomfort was the fact that Mr Courtney sat beside him — self-restrained and decorous, but still unable to conceal the natural smile of triumph at his tardy but emphatic vindication after the knifing by his foes and his treacherous friends. But the effect on Mr Balfour was more striking than even this. 1 have seen him go through many scenes of storm and difficulty ; I have watched him all through the dread and hostile struggle over coercion ; and for the first time I saw him lose nerve and courage and all readiness on this occasion. When Sir William Harcourt sab down he rose. He uttered only a sentence. But it was certainly a significant sentence. He denied that Sir William Harcourt had accurately described 'my share' in the knifing of Mr Courtney. There was an unmistakeable emphasis on the 'my.' What does it mean ? " MR BALFOUR'S STRANGE CASE. Amongst Tories as well as Liberals the question " What has come to Balfour?" is the most urgent of the hour. The general impression seems to be that he has not got over the influenza, and that his health is so broken he has lost courage for his work, and may have to take a long holiday. We know, too, the alliance with ilr Chamberlain is strained to breaking point ; in fact the • Spectator ' this week threatens that he also may in disgust throw up public life. BITS OF PEEI,. MrPeel is said to have given his successor the same advice which Mr Brand gave him when he took the chair. " You'll make," said the ex-Speaker, "errors like other people, no doubt — humanum est — but whatever you say, mind you stick to it /" During the period when the Commons were utterly disorganised by Irish obstruction it was assumed Mr Speaker must be personally on bad terms with Parnell, Jiiggar, and Co. , but this was not so. He had one private " brush," and one only, with Mr Parnell. The Irish leader had been extra adventurous, and the Chair had | interfered. The incident being over, Mr j Parnell was passing Mr Peel's seat later in the evening, and said as he walked by : "I think, Mr Speaker, that you dealt excessively hardly with me just now." Mr Peel drew himself up and bis eyes blazed. "How dare you, sir," he cried; "how dare you address such remarks to me."' Parnell, surprised, walked away ; but ever after in private spoke with gteat respect to Mr Peel. MR SrEAKER OVJA.Y. The doubt with regard to the new Speaker seems to be whether he will possess the necessary qualities to dominate the House in moments of great excitement. Mr Mellor appeared likely to make an admirable Chairman of Committees, yet proved, when his hour of trial arrived, a melancholy failure. Mr Gully's successes have been principally in arbitration and as leader of the Northern Circuit. A very fair sketch of him in the ' Weekly Sun ' says :—: — Arbitration, in its frequency and its success, is one of the signs of times of great business depress -ion and straitened incomes and expenditure ; and Mr GulJj* was the very embodiment of this change in our methods of settling business disputes. His fairness, his spotless integrity, a temperament so incapable of being ruffled as to be almost angelic, and a perf* ctly judicial mind— these are the things which made suitors with all their fierce passion and their conflicting interests gladly submit their disputes to his arbitrament. At the Bar, and when he appeared as an advocate instead of a judge, there was another | quality which came out, and which will have an opportunity of revealing itself in his new position That is his grit. Quiet but tenacious, 1 he never flustered and worried the solicitors who instructed him with those moments of depression and "funk" — to use a familiar phrase — by which some of our greatest advocates now and then paralyse a stirring an.l hard fight. Whatever case and whatever view Mr Gully took up he stuck to with equal mind through good fortune and evil, with judges who were fair and judges who were adverse. This is one of the reasons of the stroDg hold he has always maintained over the solicitors as a class. And now what manner of man is this, and what has been his method of life ? I don't know that there is in London a household more typically English in its highest and purest development than that of the Gully family. It is presided over by a woman emphatically of the old school in maternal tendencies and wifely absorption and devotion. You remember that beautiful tribute which Thackeray pays in one of his novels to the tenderness, the purity, and the sanctity of the women of this country. I often wish that Thackeray had had an opportunity of seeing the girls of the Gully family. In succession they grew up— tall, fan:, with peifecc regularity of feature, with beautiful complexions, and with the nameless softness and gentleness and sweet shyness of the young English girl. It is, perhaps, part of the refinement that belongs to them, that is the characteristic expression of their faces, that they are a musical family. The musical evenings at the home of the Gullys, in Harley street— that street of large, somewhat gaunt, but spacious and comfortable and central houses— were a pleasant social landmark in their circle of acquaintances. Every player was an amateur, and I hare heard that on some occasions no less

a person than Lord Chancellor Herschell might be seen playing the violoncello under the vigilant eye and the harmonious ear of the gentleman who conducted the little orchestra. Mr Gully's character is written in his face. He is tall, slim, erect, and wonderfully youthful-looking for a man above the sixties. White hair surmounts a face that still retains the ruddiness of youth. His physique is fine. The noseandtlie mouth are beautifully chiselled ; he is emphatically a handsome and a dis-tinguished-looking man. He has rather a low voice and a very quiet manner ; altogether gives the impression of that evenness of temper and that spontaneous self-control that can belong only to a sweet and tranquil nature. He has not taken a very active part in the House of Commons, but there is one little legislative achievement of his which is characteristic. By a curious omission in the Jaw the imputation of unchaatifcy against a woman was not a punishable offence, civil or criminal. In an outline Bill Mr Gully sought to remedy the evil. He was violently opposed by Captain Verne}' on the ground that no such distinction should be made between imputation on the chastity of a man and a woman. But I believe the Bill, after being destrayed in one session, passed in another. Woman— the new and the old— has a warm friend in the new Speaker of the House of Commons. I -wonder to how many people the name of Gully suggests a famous cause celebre which just nineteen years ago set London by the ears, and was known as the Balham mystery. The new Speaker's sire, Dr Gully, was unpleasantly mixed up in it, or rather dragged into it by an unscrupulous woman. The prosecution failed altogether to connect him in any way with the catastrophe. The victim, Mr Bravo, was a well-to-do gentleman of considerable private fortune, residing in a large house standing in its own grounds at Balham. He had married shortly before the widow of Lieutenant Ricardo, of the Guards, a young woman of considerable personal attraction, but cursed with a violent temper and liable to outbreaks of intemperance. These outbreaks were the misery of her husband's life. He had tried his best to cure the woman, and failed. One night shortly after dinner Mr Bravo was taken terribly ill, and after some hours' violent sickness died. He had, it was presently proved, been poisoned by tartar emetic administered in a bottle of claret. Bravo's friends maintained Mrs Bravo had done the deed in anger after a violent quarrel with her husband the same afternoon. This quarrel, which had to do with Mrs Bravo's drinking sherry, was not denied, but the defence declared it led to Bravo's committing suicide, and pointed to an (if I remember right) rather enigmatic speech of the poor fellow's whilst dying to prove their contention. At the coroner's inquest, which lasted several weeks, Mrs Bravo confessed to an intrigue with Dr Gully before her marriage with her husband, to whom, however, she had confessed the incident. Nevertheless he was, she said, very jealous, of a morbid temperament, 1 always suspecting }her, and constantly threatening suicide. The jury, after a prolonged inquiry, returned an open verdict, and there the affair ended, the Crown not considering the evidence against Mrs Bravo sufficient to justify a prosecution. Some years after Mrs Bravo died, it was stated, of intemperance, and her maid declared she had confessed to the murder. But this report never received practical confirmation. Dr Gully, I fancy, lived down the scandal, and died comparatively recently. He had a big reputation as a hydropathic expert, and was an immense favorite with the fair hex. Another and even more notable relative of the new Speaker was John Gully, the famous prize-fighter, who developed into a leviathan bookmaker, entered Parliament, became a pillar of the turf, and won the Derby once or twice early in the century. TWO DUCAL MARRIAGES. Sir Albert Rollit contradicts with as much emphasis as politeness permits the rumor of his pending marriage to the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, commonly called "Duchess Blair." Such a match would undoubtedly do more than anything else to make ' ' society " forget Her Grace possessed a past, and I can perfectly imagine that so far she has a say in the matter. "Barkis is willing." But what Sir Albert would gain by the union — unless in his old age he fell in love — I confess I can't see. The Duchess is, no doubt, richly gilt and not bid looking, but remembering where her money came from only a very tough conscience would, I should imagine, care to share it. A far more suitable marriage, and one that will come off, too, is the union of Lord "Bill" Beresford to the Duchess of Marlborough. This lady was originally Miss Price, daughter of Commodore Priced of the U.S. Navy. The belle of her first season, she carried off a great parti in Mr Louis Hammersley, a millionaire, who had the good taste to die in a few years, leaving her large life interests (only) in his property. The Duke of Marlborough, in the character of a rather dubious divorcee, visiting the States, fell in love with Mrs Hammersley and her life interests, and transferred both to Blenheim. The lady's money had much improved the Churchills' family seat and built some fine houses, when His Grace incontinently expired unexpectedly. His widow has now, however, so many English friends that, though of course obliged to leave Blenheim, she stayed at this side. Latterly Her Grace either bought or leased Deepdene, the beautiful country seat Lord Francis Hope squandered on the fascinating but expensive divinity now his wife. Lord "Bill " Beresford has been secretary, guide, philosopher, and friend to three Viceroys of India, and is the most popular person in Hindostan. He now, I imagine, means to rest and relax a bit. THE THEOBALD VERDICT. The Theobald case, of which I sent you the story last mail, ended in a verdict for the defendant. The jury, after hearing the evidence on both sides, came to the conclusion that Mrs Theobald's plebeian first husband Algar was dead when she married Mr Theobald, M.P., and that the man whom her greedy relatives represented as that individual had a totally different identity. Isaac Dunham, the brother who claimed the late Mrs Theobald's fortune on the ground that she was not Theobald's wife, and that he (Theobald) could not in consequence be her heir-at-law, cut a wretched figure in the witness-box. The deceased gentleman had, Dunham was forced to admit, been most generous to all his wife's poor relations, yet here they were trying to rob Mrs Theobald of her good name, and Mr Theobald's heirs of the money he had, it was admitted, merely for form's sake settled on his wife aa dowry.