OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1348, 10 June 1878, Page 3

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[wbitten specially fob the globe.] London, April 25. I suppose the telegraph will have anticipated me in the announcement of the death of that remarkable man, George Augustus Selwyn, D.D., first Bishop of New Zealand, but in more recent years the ruler of the English diocese of Lichfield. However as the "wire " would not give more than the mere announcement of his departure from this life, I propose to devote a few lines to some record of the closing scenes in the history of one whose name must be a household word from one end of New Zealand to the other. The story is a short one. Towards the close of last month Dr. Selwyn, who had reached an advanced age, was attacked by illness. It was serious at the outset, and rapidly increased. At the end of one week the venerable sufferer sent a message to the cathedral authorities asking that the prayers of the congregation assembled there on the next Sunday might be offered in his behalf. Before the close of another week his soul had quitted this " dull, cold tenement of clay," and had gone to worship at that Throne whither the prayers of many thousands of loving hearts had but shortly preceded him. All the newspapers printed biographies of him—brief ones, and in pretty much the same terms, for he had passed a large portion of his life away from the ken of the English daily newspaper, and in truth it must be added since his return to this country he had not been a Bishop after the English notions of such a personage. I well recollect one of his early appearances before the public after his return home. By way of taking a littl e holiday, partly to renew my associations with the University and city, and partly that I might be present at one of the historical events of the|place, I journeyed to Oxford to be a spectator at the laying of the foundation stone of Keeble College, a new and now flourishing College which was named after the famous author of " The Christian Year," who was a friend and contemporary, not alone of Dr. Selwyn, but of many other men whose names will live in the history of the modern English Church. Well, April weather is not to be relied upon in this climate, and so the promoters had wisely arranged to have a very short open-air ceremony, and then to adjourn to a great meeting in the Sheldonian Theatre. It was in that famous hall where I first saw Dr. Selwyn and heard him speak. I well remember it, for his oratory was in . such pronounced contrast to that of the other speakers, some of whom could talk Latin and Greek as fluently as he could speak English or Maori, and perhaps many who read these lines will remember that Selwyn's tongue was a rapid and forcible one. Since then he has administered the affairs of the diocese of Lichfield both wisely and well. Of course some of his proceedings have been much canvassed, more on account of their oddity than for any pother reason, because five and twenty years in New Zealand had made Dr. Selwyn a very different man to the placid "orthodox clergyman who is gonerally promoted to high ecclesiastical office at home. At any rate he has left behind him, both in the colony and in England, a great name and the record of great services both to the Church and to the world. How much he was reyered by the English public is shown by the deep sympathy which was expressed for him every day, almost every hour, from the first announcement of his fatal illness until his remains were laid to rest last week in the Cathedral at Lichfield. Since the famous Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, was buried, we have not had such a remarkable funeral as that of your bishop, as well as ours. It was attended by many representative men, including Mr Clifford, the eldest son of the gentleman who was once the Speaker in the New Zealand House of Eepresentatives. Mr Gladstone, too, left London and the too exciting atmosphere of Parliament to be amongst the mourners of his old friend and to speak at the meeting which followed the funeral, for immediately after the interment an assembly was held at the Palace to take measures to raise a memorial to the late Bishop, who desired the restoration of two or three mortuary chapels on the south side of the Lady Chapel, which still exist in the desolate condition into which they were thrown during the troubled times of the seventeeth century. To restore these was Dr. Selwyn's particular desire, and this will bo done, but beyond this work there remains a greater work still, viz., the division of the diocese of Lichfield. That will cost a considerable sum, but I have no doubt it will be speedily subscribed. Only on Sunday last, the Dean of Lichfield preached an eloquent funeral sermon in memory of the late bishop. In my last two letters I have briefly mentioned the case of Eachel Leverson, otherwise "Madame Eachel," who was given into custody for defrauding a Mrs Pearse, the wife of a stockbroker, of some of her jewellery on the pretence that she had incurred a debt for being made " beautiful for ever." Well, she has had her trial, and the result was as I foresaw. The jury had no hesitation in convicting her, and Bhe was sentenced to five years' penal servitude—the highest sentence allowed by the law. On her previous conviction for a similar robbery she received the same punishment, but then obtained, as is usual on first sentences of penal servitude, a remission of a portion of her term, but now she will have to endure the full penalty, for no tickets of leave are granted to old offenders. So the "Arabian perfumer to the Queen," as she dolighted to call herself—it is needless to say that her Majesty never used any of Eachel's baneful cosmetics—has, at the age of nearly seventy years, passed again into the portals of one of our convict prisons. The trial has not been without one or two noticeable incidents. Although she pretended to be a paragon of virtue, it is very doubtful whether the establishments at the West-end where this Jewess carried on business were not devoted to a worse traffic than the mere sale of powders and washes for the complexion. Indeed, Mr Baron Huddleston, in sentencing her, somewhat plainly hinted that if she had entangled herself more deeply in [ the prisoner's toils, Mrs Pearse might have had to deplore the loss of something more ' valuable to her than a hundred pounds' worth of trinkets. Anyhow the shop in Mayfnir is shut up, and this may save the peace of some families.

This Mrs Pcarse is a daughter of Signor Mario, who was for many years the finest Italian tenor that the opera possessed in London. Only last week, when I heard an orchestral band playing a pot-pourri from " Lucreziii Borgia," I wondered how many years it wns sinco I heard his fine voice singiiig' ; D'i tore ignobile." I am sorry to learn that after such a career he should be in what people call •' very low water," I understand some step

are being taken to make the old singer comfortable in the evening of his life. It is a long while since he could sing a note, but he has left us a large history of artistic recollections. Eachel, after her conviction, tried to throw odium on Mrs Pearce in respect to this condition of her father, but the Parthian shot failed to hit.

However, Eachel does not stand alone for leading silly women astray. If you could step out of an omnibus at the top of Eegent streetyou would find, within fiveminutes' walk, several establishments which exist solely on the credit given to would-be fashionable women for dresses and millinery, for which in the end some one has to " bleed" very extensively. Who would suppose, for instance, that one shopkeeper alone could in the space of a few months have given credit for £938 worth of goods to one married woman, even if she lived at one of the grandest mansions in Grosvenor square ? Yet Mr Thistlewayte, the husband of the lady in question, was sued a few days ago for the payment of that amount, and he boldly faced the claim by going into the witness-box and declaring that he made his wife an allowance of £SOO a year for her personal expenses, and maintained that for years she had not only no authority to pledge his credit with any shopkeeper, but had actually bargained that she would not run him into debt, for in times gone by he had had to pay pretty dearly for her folly. Yet Madame Eosalie, alias Mrs Schwaebe, who made Mrs Thistlewayte's bonnets and robes, scorned the idea of doing business with ladies who were so restricted, and told the Court that very few of her customers spent so little with her as £SOO per annum, and her counsel tried to persuade the jury that it was unreasonable for a man with an income of twenty or thirty thousand a year to tie his wife down to such a pit iful sum! The jury, however, were husbands, and looked at the common sense of the matter, and the result is that Madame Eosalie will have to write off Mrs Thistlethwayte's account as a bad debt as far as Mr T. is concerned. He seems to be a man of very different tastes to his wife, and he told some very instructive anecdotes about their domestic life. On one occasion he came home to Grosvenor square and found the house prepared for a grand dinner party, the guests to which had been invited without his knowing anything about it, so he at once put on all his authority, refused to have any visitors within his mansion, and told the butler to inform the invited ones as they drove up that the dinner had suddenly to be postponed. He did not tell us what Mrs Thistlethwayte said to this, but he opened the door wide enongh to show us that there are a great many very ugly ghosts within the cupboard at Grosvenor square. The judges, too, are trying to reform people in manners as well as morals, and truly their efforts were never more needed. I told you in my last letter of the extravagancies to which some of our fashionable and sporting newspapers were going. As regards the "Sporting Times," its proprietor, Mr John Corlett, and his—well, I must not say confederates, because some hon. gentlemen in the House of Commons say that that is a word which should only be used as regards thimble riggers and people who play the three card trick at Epsom or Punchestown—subordinates, after they had persistently and grossly abused and reviled Mr Levy, the proprietor of the "Daily Telegraph," have been forced to eat humble pie in a public Court, and to offer to their forgiving prosecutor the most abject apologies and promises of better conduct.

But I need not dwell wholly on things that are past, for events that are coming demand some serious attention. Trade continues in a very depressed state, and there are signs that the struggle about working hours and wages between masters and workmen will be a pro-r longed and bitter one. We have hardly ended a strike of masons in London, to the total defeat of the men, for whom scarcely a man outside their own union felt any sympathy, than in the cotton districts of Lancashire thero has been a wholesale strike against any reduction of wages. This week nearly a hundred thousand operatives are standing idle. The masters have declared for a ten- . per-cent. reduction of wages, but the working people will not entertain such a proposal for a moment. The fact is that, between the masters on one side and the co-operative mills on the other, while some of the best markets of the world have been closed against them, Lancashire has been producing more goods than consumers either want or can pay for. Why, anyone walking along the principal street in London, with his eyes open, can see in the shop windows piles of American-made calico, and the French manufacturers are producing such pretty printed shirtings, that they must have stolen away a good slice of the trade from England. Some of the Lancashire producers would have us believe that the Rhode Island made goods are being sold at a loss in this country, but it is absurd to think that the Americans would continue to do business at a loss. There are not wanting signs to-day that, one by one, the mills will be set going by arrangement, a mutual concession of short time on the one side, and wages on the other, apparently finding much favour. But, with the lurid clouds of possible war hanging over this country, it is difficult to say what means will be successful for producing a revival of trade. We have had a very exciting little drama played in a polico court by actors and actresses of some eminence. The defendant was Herr (or Mr) Bandmann, a gentleman who I fancy has played on the Australian stage, if he has not been in New Zealand. He came to this country some nine or ten years ago, and has always held a very respectable position on the stage, his great dramatic ability being only marred by his foreign pronunciation of our language. He was fortunate enough to make a conquest of Miss Milly Palmer, whom he married, and she proved a great professional acquisition to him, for she was naturally a clever actress, besides which she had the advantage of being trained for the stage by an accomplished critic. She does not appear in court, the lady in the case being Mrs Rousby, of whom you may have heard. Mr Rousby, her husband, was making his way slowly but surely on the provincial stage, when he met this lady in the West of England. He married her and brought her to London, where her loveliness and easy natural style of acting chained even professional beholders, and the want of stage experience was more than compensated for by natural charms, which Madame Rachel could not imitate at any price. But both these people have tempers which they cannot control. Mr Bandmann in fact is not a phlegmatic G-erman. He wrote a play and sold it to Mrs Rousby, who thereupon wished to alter it as she liked and to produce it when she pleased, This did not suit the author, and the result waa an altercation at the rehearsal, ending in Mr Bandmann trying to seize the mamiscript of the play, and that being resisited by Mrs Rousby, he seized her by the arm in so rough a way as to oblige her to call in a doctor and then to summon her assailant before a magistrate, who has sent the case fp.r trial by a jury. Mrs Rousby who determined to have her own way and she has had it. She produced the play last Saturday night, and acted in it with her injured arm in a sling. But this quarrel will not do either of the parties any good in public estimation.