OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 932, 20 June 1877, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[written specially ron the globe.]

London, May 3,

With the advent of May we have everything that a metropolitan could desire — except the weather. We have flowers of every shade of brilliant colour, but they are due to the skill of the horticulturist and grown under glass. We have ladies in costumes which in tint rival the most exquisite (lowers, but out of doors they are obliged to wrap themselves up in thick woollen garments. The Queen is this week holding drawingrooms at Buckingham Palace, but the struggling crowd of ladies that go there are worse tempered than usual, on account of the chills and shivers they get while waiting in the Park. Yesterday her Majesty quite stepped out of the retired life she has led for so many years, and went with several members of her family to a gorgeous flower show at South Kensington. Everything had been done to make this visit a success, but for once those who reckoned on the proverbial “Queen’s weather” were out in their reckoning, for the day was the gloomiest we have had this year. In short we have May, but in place of the spring sunshine there is a continuance of north-cast wind.

But even if we had the bright skies of New Zealand, instead of a pall of English clouds, I doubt whether people would really be very much more cheerful, as every one is full of

the most gloomy anticipations as to the progress and result of war which has just broken out in Eastern Europe. It is not my business to write on that topic, for the telegraph will have made it known to you before these lines reach Christchurch, but I may mention one circumstance to show the agitated state of public mind. Within a week from the declaration of war the price of wheat and flour w T cnt up 20 to 30 per cent., and the best white wheat is now fetching over 70s per quarter. Only last week I had a note from the AgentGrencral for South Australia, telling me that in a telegram he had just received it was mentioned that wheat w r as selling at a price which would allow it to be shipped to England and sold here at a profit. We shall look to our Southern colonies for a supply, if prices contimio to ride high. The annual meeting of the Art Union fo London was held a few days ago and its proceedings were, as usual, interesting to every quarter of the globe, as it has always a large number of colonial subscribers. lam glad to say that one of the chief prizes has been won by a Hew Zealand man, Mr J. Kossiter, of Hew Plymouth. Several of the other prizes are going to various parts of Australia, and this should lead the southern colonists to give increased support to a really genuine and valuable institution, whose engravings and pictures adorn walls of many a middle class home that would otherwise be without any form of art but the paper hanging.

A young man named William Henry Wood, who was arrested at Otago about the beginning of this year, has been brought back to London, and w r as yesterday committed for trial on a charge of stealing nearly £IOOO from his employers, and also obtaining £463 by fraud from a man with whom he had some transactions in shares. Wood was for a long time assistant secretary to a suburban gas company, and when he had robbed them of as much as lie could, he deserted his wife and five young children, and sailed for Hew r Zealand with another woman. A detective, however, went out by a quicker route, and when Wood arrived at Otago ho found the representative of English law and justice waiting to receive him. The company’s money was all spent, and they will get nothing back, but the man ho defrauded will be better off, as the prisoner has given up a draft on the Bank of How Zealand for £450 of that money. He wall most likely be sent to penal servitude, or “slavery” as Lord Coleridge calls it.

As the nations talk about striving furiously together this summer wo are not likely to have any famous people come to sec us, but we shall not be without at least an interesting visitor. I mean the gorilla from Berlin. Ho is the only living gorilla ever seen in Europe, and it is said that the Zoological Society of London has offered as much as £2OOO for him. This gorilla, which is described as being like a little negro boy in the face, was brought home by Dr Falkenstein who was a member of the Prussian expedition to Africa. He is to come to London during the season, and will probably be accompanied by his cousin, a very lively chimpanzee. If any one with a graphic pen could obtain the autobiography of Charlotte Eamsden, he woidd find in it the materials for a very exciting romance in the style of Wilkie Collins. This middle-aged lady, now an inmate of one of Her Majesty’s convict prisons, was married several years ago to a city merchant, who has not lived Avith her for a long time, and has resisted several very audacious attempts to make him pay for her separate maintenance. She has long been known in our civil courts. What first brought her into public notoriety w r as a very remarkable statement she made in the Lord Mayor’s Court to the effect that some time previously her husband Avantcd her to embark in the same business as Madame Eachel (of “ beautiful-for-ever” notoriety) who Avas at that time very much “under a cloud,” and she produced an advertisement which she said her husband dreAv up with the heading “The Egyptian Mystery,” a name by which she has ever since been best known. Since then she appeared as plaintiff in an action for libel, Avhich cost one of our daily newspapers nearly £SOO. Her last exploit was making a false accusation of robbery against the matron of a Jewish Convalescent Home, Avhere she AA r as maintained for some time, and to support her own perjury she suborned several of the lowest class of Whitechapel Jew's and Jewesses. Fortunately her plan was frustrated; one of her companions gave evidence against her, and she is now in penal servitude for live years. All England is ringing Avith the praises of a gallent little band of Welsh colliers Avho, AA'hcn every hope seemed tied, summoned up their tremendous courage, and facing the almost certainty of death, descended a flooded coal mine and rescued five of their comrades Avho had been imprisoned there for nine days. Space forbids me to attempt even an outline of their marvellous adventure which, though it took place in an obscure village, and amongst a people who speak more of the Cymric language than the English, ought to shine out conspicuous in our history of deeds of daring. The like of it lias not been heard of since the battle of Balaklava, and for cool pluck tliis descent into a mine full of Avater and deadly gas far exceeds the charge of the Six Hundred, Avho had in the surroundings cf the battle field much excitement that was wanting at the pit mouth. The Queen sent repeated messages to inquire after the rescued men, and even in the House of Commons there Avas during the whole of tAvo nights a very unusual amount of excitement, so much so, in fact, that the Secretary for Home Affairs had to post up his telegrams in the lobby. These rescuers are to have the Albert medal.

A man, named Harper, who died recently in one of the old-fashioned streets in the south of London, has made an addition to our collection of curious and eccentric wills. He left a good round sum of money, but his best bequest was two of Turner’s pictures, which he desires to be hung in the National Gallery. His wish will doubtless be gratified, and the nation will secure an almost priceless present. But the curious part of his will is this : he leaves a sum of money, which will produce a dividend of about fourteen or fifteen pence a week, to a young woman, one of his domestic servants, for the support of a young black cat. As all annuitants proverbially live long, and as, according to another proverb, a cat has nine lives, who could calculate the time at which the capital sum of this interesting bequest will fall into the hands of the residuary legatee ? AVe are beginning to find out that our modern explosives are not quite (be harmless things that their inventors .would make them out to be. One acquaintance of mine, who is

connected with a company for making cotton gunpowder, and is occasionally to be found with his coat pockets full of samples that he insists are as harmless as packets of tobacco, has given me some curious facts respecting an explosion that startled London on the evening of Easter Monday, and was not alone heard but actually felt at a distance of fourteen miles. It seems that a man named Tatham, who is employed by Trinity House as a diver to operate on sunken wrecks, and had very successfully used a good deal of powder under water, had a mind, being out for a holiday, to give people what he called “a start.” He procured a torpedo weighing about a dozen pounds, and containing a large solid cube of powder. The actual power of this explosive is greater than that of dynamite and nearly double that of ordinary gun cotton. Fortunately he fired this splendid plaything in a field in the open country, and so the only damage he did was an immense destruction of glass, and the ploughing up of the field, in which the torpedo buried itself. A few days afterwards Captain Hawley Smart, a most successful writer of sporting novels, was sitting in his chambers reading before his parlour fire, when a violent explosion, much worse than one of gas, took place in his room' This was due to the negligence of a chemist in the Strand, who had sent to another gentleman living in the same house a bottle containing four ounces of a highly dangerous compound of acids intended for a scientific purpose. A boy was sent with the miniature torpedo : he gave it, in an unlabelled bottle to a servant girl, who took it to the wrong room, where the warmth speedily caused a rapid generation of gas, and hence the explosion. Captain Smart luckily escaped any personal injury, but a great amount of damage was done to his furniture.

The congregation in the parish church in the little village of Market Easen have just witnessed a strange sight—the baptism by immersion of a grown up girl who, dressed in white, walked in face of all the people from the vestry to the font —or bath, as I should call it —which had been specially provided for her, and was dressed with muslin hangings. This is the latest novelty in the Church of England.