PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 13, 30 September 1905, Page 49

PERSONAL NOTES FROM LONDON.

{From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, August 18. 'Xie new Commander-in-Cliief of the Australian Station, Vice-Admiral Sir A. .Wilmot Hawksworth Fawkes, K.C.V.0., has been in the Navy no Less than 45 years. He is a son of the late Major Richard Fawkes, and entered the Navy in 1860. He attained his captaincy in 1886, but for two years prior to that event had commanded Queen Victoria’s favourite yacht the Osborne. His latest command was the big cruiser Terrible in 1896, and since then he has acted for three years as Naval Adviser to the Inspector-General of Fortifications, and as private secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty and as A.D.C. to Queen Victoria. He was promoted Rear-Admiral on New Year’s Day, 1901, and to his present rank in March last. Admiral Fawkes, whose private residence in London is in Seymour-street, Fortman Square, is keen on all kinds of field sports. The Hon. F. S. Jackson’s luck in the Test Match coin-spinning preliminaryineited Malcolm Ramsay to add the following verse to the song “A Quaint Old Bird” in the popular play “The Catch of the Season” last Monday night: The Cornstalks journeyed from “down below ” To fetch the “ashes” back, But Englands pluck and lacker's luck Havp kept them in our sack. Whate’er the odds, the kindly gods Have fought for England’s Imss: 6o every time, with fortune prime, lie’s never at a loss — He always wins the toss. Chorus: Oh, isn’t, he a quaint old bird? Ho spins the coin without a word; As it flies up like a starling, ’’lt’s ’tails,’ ” cries Captain Darling— But it’s “heads” for Englands lucky bird. What ought to lie done to the cricketing journalist who described Fry’s 144 last Monday as “a gross proceeding?” “C. 8. by the way, showed no particular partiality for any one of the seven Australian bowlers tried during the innings. He hit Noble for 34, Cotter for 31, McLeod for 20, Armstrong for 19, Laver for 16, Duff for 14, and JJopkins for 10, and for once in a way showed that he eould “cut” both hard and correctly. He made in fact some thirty runs by means of this stroke, including five or six fours. Mr. R. S. Smythe, th? veteran Australian impresario, arrived in London by the Blue Anchor liner Geelong this week, having made the journey from Australia by way of South Africa.

Miss Marie Hall, the violinist, will doubtless visit Australasia in due course, but it is America and Canada which will claim her presence this year. For her five months’ tour in the New World, beginning in November next, this gifted girl of one-and-twenty will receive no less than £lO,OOO in fees. Her career is one of the great romances of music. A few years ago Marie Hall was playing her violin in the streets to support her parents; to-day she commands a yearly income equal to those of the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice of England combined. Mr J. W. (“Long-drive”) Walker has arrived in London on business connected with the Waihi Grand Junction and certain Waihi properties upon which he holds a two years’ option. This is his fifth visit to London on mining business. He is in the best of health, and has set to work with characteristic energy. Calling upon Mr Walker one day this week, I found him “up to the eyes” in work, and he had been hard at it, he told me, from six a.m. each day throughout the week. Development work in the Grand Junction is proceeding apace, and he expects that a plant equal to 101) stamps, and driven by electric power, will be in full swing by next June. “Do you anticipate interesting developments in fhe new properties adjacent?” I inquired. Mr Walker answered the question by asking another. “Can you tell me,” he said, “what is going to be the result of this Peace Conference in America?” The fact is that, although there is plenty of money in England available for investment, people are chary of investing it abroad while the political future is in sueh a state of uncertainty. To my question as to how matters stood in regard to the flotation of one of the new properties (Walker’s Waihi Gigantic), upon which he holds a two years’ concession, Mr Walker replied: “There’s an old saying. ‘Never try to sell a hen on a wet day.’ Well, the weather is wet just at present. It isn’t good for the feathers.” The veteran mine manager is too old a hand at financial work to take the public into his confiilence before his plans are brought to fruition. But though he would not commit himself to any forecast, the impression I gathered was that he looked forward with confidence to a successful issue of his projects. “Meanwhile,” he said. “I shall wait till the clouds roll by.” The date .of Mr Walker’s return to New Zealand is at present uncertain. He will remain here till the result of the Peace Conference is announced, after which he proposes to spend a fortnight’s holiday in his native Scotland before getting to work again in London. Dr. Emil Aubin and Mrs Aubin, of the Thames, returned to London this week from a Scottish tour, and to-day they will leave for the Continent. They intend to visit Paris, Switzerland, and Italy, and join the Ophir at Naples on September 17th. During his stay in England Dr. Aubin has been successful in gaining the degree of M.D., London. Miss Mary Fraser and Miss M. E. McLeod, of Waipu, Auckland, have arrived in London on their way round the world. They are travelling for pleasure, and have already spent a year in Canada, where they arrived from New Zealand in May of last year. They went from Canada to Boston and New York in April, 1905, and then sailed for Liverpool in the Baltic, arriving on June Ist, Since that date they have been staying with friends in England and Scotland, besides making a tour through the Highlands. Next week they leave London on a visit to Paris and Switzerland, and on September Ist they leave for Sydney by the P. and O. liner Mongolia, en route for New Zealand. Mr. S. Shaw, of Waihi, who has come to London to form a company to work certain undeveloped properties in the Waihi district, reports that he is tanking satisfactory progress. Probably, however, he has discovered the truth of one of Mr. “Long-drive” Walker's aphorisms: “Don’t go to market until it’s market-day.” Mr. S. Herbert Cox, whom the Marquis of Londonderry, as president of the Board of Education, has appointed, temporarily, to the Professorship of Mining at the Royal School of Mines, in succession to the late Sir Clement le Neve Foster, has been an inspector of mines in New Zealand and instructor in geology,

mineralogy and mines in Sydney Technical College. Since 1900 he has been entirely engaged in private practice as a mining engineer in England, France, Spain, Egypt, the United States and Canada. Mr. Cox was president of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1899-1900. The memorial of Bishop Jenner, the first Bishop of Dunedin, has just been erected in the church at Preston-next-Wingham, Kent, It takes the form of the filling with stained glass of a twolight window in the south aisle. The figures represented are those of St. Gregory and St. Augustine of Hippo. Beneath are small subjects illustrating events in the lives of the saints—St. Gregory finding the captive British children in Rome, and St. Augustine studying in a garden and hearing the voice saying, “Tolle, lege.” On the sill line runs the following dedication: “To the glory of God and in loving memory of Henry Lascelles Jenner, D.D., first Bishop of Dunedin, New Zealand, and for 44 years vicar of this parish, who entered into his rest September 18, 1898.” The design of the window has been arranged by Mr Henry Jenner, F.S.A., a son of the late Bishop. Mr Guy 11. Scholefield, of Wellington, has an interesting article in the current “Nineteenth Century” on the danger to the thinly-populated Australian Commonwealth presented by the sudden rise of Japan to the position of a first-class Power. “The White Peril in Australasia” is the title of his article. “Unless Australia, from an empty shard, quickly becomes a hive of industry,” he

concludes, "the Yellow Peril will maintain its reality ami be a lasting menace to the development of the remarkable economic and social evolution that is gradually unfolding in the interdependent countries of Australia and New Zealand.” To guard against the Yellow Peril Australia, he says, must establish herself in possession of the Australian Continent by attracting while settlers to open up the back country, an! it must be done quickly. The shortsighted policy of “Australia for the Australians” must not Im- allowed to endanger the destiny of the Commonwealth.