PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue II, 12 January 1901, Page 81

PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

(From Our London Correspondent.) LONDON, November 30. Lieut.-Colonel Francis, of the Fourth Contingent, has benefited much by his trip to Brighton, but the Medical Board has pronounced him untit to return to the front, so he will probably leave for New Zealand about the beginning of December. He has been much impressed by the hospitality that he has experienced on every hand in England. Georgiana, Countess of Dudley, has almost overwhelmed him with kindness. Sir Richard Temple entertained him for a eouple of days at The Nash, Kempsey, near Worcester, where Lieut.-Colonel Francis was much interested in the’line collection of armoury. Before lie leaves he will probably be presented to the Queen at Windsor.

Mr Justice Denniston has been spending a couple of days with Mr F. A. Anson at Oxford, where he met Sir William Anson, M.P. for Oxford. Mr Justice Denniston was a guest at the dinner of the Dental Hospital of London and London School of Dental Surgery last Saturday. During the last few days of his stay he has been looking into several of the London courts and seeing something of the English methods of administration of justice. Mrs Denniston and her daughters have been busy shopping. The continuous wet weather has made excursions out of the question.

Mr Arthur M. Myers, of Auckland, who has, in company with his mother, been touring' on the Continent for some time past, is back again in London looking the picture of health. Mr Myers’ Continental round included a thorough tour of the Paris Exhibition, and from the French capital he and his mother went on to Switzerland and thence to Austria and Germany, returning to the metropolis just in time to witness the rout of the C.l.V.’s by the London crowd. At present Mr Myers has not definitely decided upon the date of his return to New Zealand, nor upon the route he will adopt. In all probabih ity, however, he will start shortly after Christmas for the Riviera and tour leisurely through to one of the Italian ports to join an outward bound steamer in the early spring. The very rare “Naval Victoria Cross” (1857), given to Edward .Robinson. 11.M.5. Shannon, with the bars for Lucknow, and the Mutiny Medal, fetched 100 guineas at Debenham's sale last Friday. Mr. Herbert R. Rathbone, a brother of Mr. Wilfred Rathbone, of Auckland, lias just been returned to the Liverpool City- Council as member for Sefton Park. Standing as a Radical and suspected pro-Boer in a red-hot Tory constituency, Mr. Rathbone had small expectation of being returned, but he beat his Conservative opponent by 200 votes. Mr. C. J. Blake, Lord Enniskillen and Captain Greer, three of the leading lights of the Irish turf, have come to the conclusion that Captain Scott is not a fit ami proper person to share in the delights of the “sport of kings.” In v.ulgar parlance. Captain Scott has been “Warned oil” in consequence of an investigation held, last week in Dublin by the trio aforementioned into the running of the captain’s horse, Ravensplume. His trainer, T. Maguire, shares Scott's fate. The captain, it will be remembered, was in New South Wales for some years, and took to "wife the widow of Mr. White, the well-known sportsman. He came to England in Diamond Jubilee year as doctor to the equine part of the New South Wales Mounted Rifle Contingent. Later he transferred himself to Ireland, and had several horflW'ifi training there, including Levanter, Ca Ira, Achray, Kiora and others. ‘ Ca Ira won the Grand Prize at Leopardstown, and that seems to hate been the biggest plum Captain Scott picked up during his brief career on the Trish turf. Captain Ferguson (who married Lord Hampden’s- daughter) ihml Captain Lord Loeb are both safely back

from South Africa. The latter's wound is progressing favourably.

Sam Cavil], the Australian coloured pugilist, who stems to be “si-rapping'' all the year round, and gets more hidings than ha'pence at the game, was the victim of a shockingly had decision at Wonderland last Saturday evening. The darkey was opposed in an eight round bout to a Mile End lad named Crutcliington. Cavill had all the best of the initial exchanges, and just before the elost of the round got home a terrific right swing on the Mile Ender’s ivory box. Crutehington reeled buck and immediately held out his hand in tc.keu of defeat. He was taken to his corner, and was found to have a couple of his teeth clean knocked out. In the ordinary course Cavill should have straightway been declared the winner, but instead Crutchington was persuaded to continue *he fight, and after a few minutes’ rest did so. He was very cautious for a time, and then started to try and put Cavill out. In this he signally failed, and in every round Cavill put on a few more points to his score. Yet at the end of the contest the verdict went to Crutchington! The only way to make sure of getting the judge’s verdict at some of these London boxing places is—if you happen not to be “in the swim"—to knock your opponent clean out. Even then you may find yourself roblied of the prize on a put-up claim for a "foul.”

Mr A. G. Hales Is, next to lleiiir.il Buller, the war-hero of the moment. His article on the nurses at the front in Wednesday’s “Daily News" was really admirable, and this morning that journal devotes two columns (and a portrait) . to his book "Campaign I’ietures,” published to-day. The reviewer seems to have caught the style of his subject, for he glories in what more chaste critics consider

"Smiler’s” literary delinquencies. After referring to the famous "Daily News” war correspondents of the past, Forbes, Labouchere. O’Donovan, MeGahan, Hicks Pashu. etc., the writer says of Mr Hales: “He is a new type: a living symbol of the great Imperialistic movement of which we are justseeing the beginning on the threshold of the new century. His school was the Australian bus’ll, as our colonists call the primeval wilds of their magnificent country. He learnt self-help and earned his ‘tucker’ under the free air of Heaven; in the back blceks and the gold fields: and. like all colonists, has turned his hand to most things. It is plain, therefore, that Mr Hales's luck was in when war broke out in another colony. The field was fair for his efforts in picture painting. Ever-shifting camps bad always been Tiis lot in life. The veldt was only another phase of the bush. Hence his success as a painter of campaign pictures; hence, we take it, the secret of his sudden popularity. Some eall these pictures flamboyant. So they are; full of purple patches. Mr Hates is no anaemic impressionist—admirable in his cynical, world-weary nay. though that sort of man may be but a lusty, full-blooded, hard-hitting, back-block bred colonial, with the courage of his convictions. The finicky, over-educated, hyper-critical, kidgloved person will shudder at the example of Mr Hales's work which follows—nay, even the more kindly and sympathetic may object that the assembling of the London multitude evokes no sensations in their minds but those of fear and horror of an orgie unparalleled— : eycn in London. But listen to Mr Hales! The. sight is new to him; and calls forth image after image in a wild and rushing torrent of words which sweep one away: <

‘As I looked, I caught a distant hum of voices—a far-off sound, such as I have heard amid Pacific isles when wind and waves were beating upon coral crags, and foam-topped rollers thrashed the surf into the magic music of the storm-tossed sea. It was the roar of London's multitude welcoming home her own; and what a sound it was! I have heard the crash of tempests on Southern coasts when ships were reeling in the breath of the blast and souls to their God were going; 1 have crouched low in my saddle w hen the tornado has swept trees from the forest ns a boy biuslieh flowers with his footsteps. But never had I heard a voice like that!' ” _

Douglas Robertson. of Auckland. is visiting her many friends and <elu tions in England. She has just resumed from Bournemouth, and is at present staying with Colonel Marvin. After a brief stay at Cambridge she will accompany an aunt after Christinas to Mentone, and will probably go jn to Italy for the winter. Her visit to England will probably last a year more. 1 In his account of his recent expedition to the region of Tanganyika Mr, K(E. S. Moore told the members of the BOyal Geographical Society of some ■xtraortlinary forests of heath found vicinity of the Mountains of Ums Moon. The heath was not as we Icjipw it in England. The trees grew io*h height of sixty feet, and resembled the Alpine pine forests only on ♦ gigantic scale. For centuries these ♦tecs had grown, died and rotted •way. with the result that the true ground was covered with a spongy mess of vegetation forty or more feet deep. As they were crossing this heath belt, every now and then a carrier would disappear in this vegetable ■aass, and would have to be hauled out by roj»es from a hole forty feet deep. Evidently Mr. Moore’s carrier did not appreciate his foot being on his native heath. It is, I think, a great pity that some of , the colonial volunteers who went creditably through the greater part of .the Transvaal war should now be tarnishing their escutcheons by posing as fair-weather-eum-picnic soldiers and growling because the hospitals, the food, and fifty other things were not exactly as they had expected them to be. Of course they were not. Wat is scarcely a review. Things constantly go wrong. Scandals are numerous and terrible tales of neglect here or mismanagement there can always be proved up to the hilt. But what then? That is WAR, and the sensitive colonial who expects the comforts of a sham fight on a campaign had better •top at home next time. A singularly intemperate letter appears in the “Chronicle” to-day signed Emily Xieol, of Auckland, the secretary of a Red Cross Nursing Brigade, which offered a contingent of nurses for the front and received a snubbing “No. thanks” as reward. She is (not perhaps unnaturally) splenetic on the subject of the hospital mismanagement, and hits out recklessly. It way smooth her ruffled feathers to learn that a picked body of London lady nurses (boasting far higher professional qualifications and experience than. 1 suspect, Auckland’s gallant little band could claim) were equally firmly repudiated. The truth is the military authorities—fearful of scandal didn’t want nurses. There were, I know, scores in Capetown who simply couldn’t get to the front. Such dames of wrinkled visage and uncertain age as arrived were promptly picked up, but not the attractive Flossies and Topsies who had just decided the darlings!—that to nurse a nice, handsome Tommy Atkins was their vocation. Mr Lawson Johnston, who died last Saturday, aged 65, was the inventor <of “Bovril,” out of which he made in round figures two millions. He devoted his attention early in life to the composition of concentrated foods, and succeeding beyond his anticipations tried a number of experiments on the lines of Liebig. From one of these came “Bovril,” which proved more savoury and palatable than any of ils predecessors. It is unquestionably the best thing of its kind, and very unlikely to be improved bn. The literary riddle is an engaging pastime of the moment which I can cordially recommend to Christmas part ies on a hot afternoon at the Antipodes. The hostess asks “Why did Anthony Hope?” and after several futile replies such as “Because the Heart of Princess Osra was his,” a prize is awarded to the ingenious inventor of “Because Mrs Campbell Praed.” A favourite conundrum of this class is “Why did Julie ’Opp?” Answers are various, but the favourite seems to be “Because she heard Haydn Qoffin.” One is also asked: “What gave Barry Pain?” “To see Flora S|tee».” Another, “Why was Rider Haggard?" “Because he had to Marie Corelli." A very neat one. Finally, ■a a mixture of sport and politics, “When does Albert, Trott?” “When Gibson Bowles.”