OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1372, 9 July 1878, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[WBITTEN SPECIALLY FOE THE GLOBE.] London, May 23. People hare not yet ceased! to talk of the great loss which the Church of England has sustained by the death of Dr. Selwyn. Even in Convocation, which sat last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury joined with some of the bishops in paying a tribute of respect to his memory, and deploring his removal from their councils. Many of his warmest admirers, however, are acting, to my thinking, very injudiciously in urgently pressing on public attention his claims to a memorial, and already they have elicited some counter expressions which show that, although years have elapsed since he was Bishop of New Zealand, time has not altogether mellowed differences of opinion as to his policy. It is a pity that that want of worldly wisdom which the clergy so often show should threaten to mar the prospects of the Selwyn memorial. But any matter of sentiment finds a poor chance of public acceptance now, for still we think and talk of the prospects of war. Although we cannot be said to be out of danger yet, few amongst the general public know how perilously near to fighting this country has been. Amongst the contributors to the literature of this remarkable epoch I observe Sir Julius Vogel, who has put forward a plan for a Q-overnment insurance of war risks on ships, a grandly sounding scheme, but one which has only been noticed by practical people in order to be ridiculed. 1 should have thought your Agent-Q-eneral had quite enough without troubling himself about this matter. Many of the papers comment on the instructions which have been sent to him to send out to your colony five thousand emigrants during the current year. It is thought that your Government is not acting in this matter quite so vigorously as heretofore ; but intending emigrants are advised on trustworthy authority that New Zealand is in many respects the best colony to which they can go. I suppose a still further drain will be made on our home supply of domestic servants, though good ones are rare enough here. Ask any mistress of a household her experience, and she will tell you that the applicants for domestic service are mostly such young women as this country might well be rid of; but then they would not do any better with you.

I am glad to observe that several of the prizes distributed this spring by the Art Union of London will find their way to the fortunate winners in several parts of the Australasian colonies. Those in New Zealand who are regular subscribers may be glad to hear that the council have secured the right of reproducing a series of five remarkable pictures by Mr Frith, which are now on exhibition at the Royal Academy, and have been highly praised by all shades of critics. We have been pretty gay in London this spring. Even at Court there has been a little dissapation, for the Queen has her eldest daughter, the Princess Imperial of Germany, staying with her. Her husband, too, has come over, and one of their children, and there is to be another wedding in the Royal Family, that of the Duke of Connaught, whose bride has been invited to Balmoral, whither the Queen has gone this week. Socially things continue very dull, and one is not cheered at all by reading the accounts of the great strike of cotton operatives in Lancashire, where there have been some deplorable riots in consequence of the firm determination of masters to reduce wages, owing to the great depression of trade. The prevailing dullness has even reached the turf, and sporting men who came back last week from Chester Races, which used to be one of the biggest and most aristocratic meetings in England, spoke of the sport in the most despondent tones. My readers will recollect the case of the Rev. Mr Dodwell, who fired a pistol at the Master of the Rolls, and was tried for that offence, but was cleverly got off under a plea of insanity, and was consequently ordered to be detained in an asylum during pleasure of of the Crown (which means the Home Office). A very pretty little trick has been tried on by his friends. Having practically secured his acquittal on the ground that he was out of his mind, they have now tried to procure his discharge on the ground that he has since been proved to be of sound mind. The Court of Queen's Bench, however, held that it had no jurisdiction to interfere, and consequently Mr Dodwell's friends must worry the Home Secretary. Nothing that has come to light in the English law courts during the past month, or eveu for many years, can at all compare with a most extraordinary trial that has this week concluded in Dublin, after a hearing which occupied twenty-two days. If any one in New Zealand is so fortunate as to have sent to him a complete file; of any Dublin daily newspaper, I recommend him to peruse carefully the numbers for this present month of May, in which he will find some scores, 1 think I might almost say hundreds of columns of the report of the Bagot will case. He will not find it very well reported, but it is readable for all that. Parenthetically 1 may observe how strange it is that Ireland, which used not so very many years ago to furnish all the best reporters employed on the London press, has ceased to furnish that supply, not having at home enough men to do work of a first-rate style. Anyhow, we shall most likely have the report of the trial carefully revised and published in a book form, and then it will be more readable and furnish a more exciting story than any novel I have ever read by any English or French author. Briefly, the salient facts were these. An Irishman named Christopher Neville Bagot emigrated many

years ago to South Australia, where there must be many hundreds of people who well recollect, and some, perhaps, who have too much cause to do so. lie amassed an immense fortune, with which he returned home, and purchased a fine estate near his birthplace. There he became acquainted with the Yerners, an old Irish family, consisting of the widow, one son, and two daughters of a baronet who was for many years a Member of Parliament, but is now dead. Christopher Bagot had all his life had a remarkable eye for a pretty woman, and he very soon formed a great passion for the younger of the two sisters, Miss Alice Yerner. Teey had not been acquainted for more than a week before he proposed marriage, she being twenty-two years' old, and he nearly fifty, besides having nearly lost the use of his limbs, as a consequence of hard living in Australia, combined with excessive debauchery. But don't you know how the pretty duet in VElisir d'Amore commences (in the English version) : " I have riches ; thou hast beauty, I have gold and thou hast charms;" and this was what Christopher Bagot sang to his Hibernian Adina. She parleyed for a time, but this only increased the fervour of her elderly admirer, and at last she consented to become his wife. Then, according to her evidence, he wanted to be married privately and secretly, and so making an excuse to remain behind, when her family were leaving London. Miss Alice Yerner accompanied Mr Bagot in a closed carriage, with the blinds down, to some dingy part of the metropolis which she cannot now recognise, and, in what she supposed to be a registrar's office, went through some ceremony of marriage. No record of this can bo found, and it is suggested that the whole thing, if it ever happened, was a sham invented by one who had deceived others besides Miss Yerner. Before this event, all the parties had led a life of remarkable dissipation, but after it Christopher Bagot took severely to drink. Champagne immediately after breakfast; another bottle for "fizz" before dinner, and plenty of the same liquor at that meal, until, in the rooms which Mr Bagot occupied at an hotel in London, there must have been a constant fusillade of Moet's corks. At length, in a drunken fit, he denied that he was married, which so alarmed the lady who supposed that she was Mrs Bagot that she procured a special license from the Archbishop's office, and called in a clergyman from the nearest rectory, and was married to Mr Bagot publicly, in his rooms at the hotel, between nine and ten o'clock the next night. Six weeks afterwards a boy was born. Mr Bagot was remarkably prond of this, fondled the child for some five months, and made a will leaving him nearly all his property. Then Mr Bagot's brothers appeared on the scene, and suddenly the father renounced the child, declared that it was not his, and called the mother the most opprobrious names, and made another will. The object of this month's trial was to set these conflicting wills right, and in the end, after a long wrangle, the jury found that the boy was legitimate, and he will probably now get all the property. At length a railway company has succeeded in killing a member of Parliament. The victim was Sir Francis Goldsmid, a Jew who sat for Beading. He was a man of great age, but comparatively active and very clear in the head. His well-known face will be missed from the House of Commons, where he had had a seat for many years. He was coming up to town from one of his country seats, and had arrived at the Waterloo terminus of the South-Western Railway, when, on the door being thrown open by a porter, Sir Francis attempted to get out of the carriage while it was still in motion, and fell between the platform and the wheels into the space which is now colled " the death trap." He was very badly crushed, and was removed to a hospital where he piteously appealed to the doctors not to touch him, but to leave him to die. He expired a few minutes afterwards. This accident has revived public discussion about the causes which bring about so many of these disasters, but like all that has gone before, it will come to nothing unless the House of Commons resolves to do something severe with the companies. In this instance the offending company will escape scot free, for the deceased baronet was so enormously rich—l hear that he was worth four millions sterling—that it would be a farce for any of his relatives to claim compensation. -The publisher of the " Whitehall Review," a " society journal " which took occasion to publish a very cruel libel concerning a woman who was not in "society," has had a very narrow escape from imprisonment. The woman, whose life had been most irreproachable, prosecuted the publisher in a criminal court, though he, poor man, was blameless, and never saw the article till it was in print. The writer was a gentleman who has long been connected with the " Morning Post," and a barrister. He boldly acknowledged the fault, and received a severe verbal castigation from Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. However, he saved his publisher, who was let off with a fine of £250. Such is the English law of libel!

I mentioned in a recent letter that the young Earl of Aylesford had commenced proceedings to obtain a divorce fi*om his wife on account of her "carrying on" with another while her husband was with the Prince of Wales in India, but that the trial of the caFe had been postponed owing to the Queen's Proctor having intervened, and made counter charge 1 ?* against the earl himself, which _if E roved would have deprived him of the relief e desired to obtain. The case has not yet come for trial, nor has it even been mentioned in the Divorce Court since notice of opposition by the Queen's Proctor was given, but incidentally some other proceedings have taken place which throw light on the causes of this opposition, which it now seems to me is entirely groundless. It appears that it is owing to certain informatiou which was supplied to the Queen's Proctor by a Mr W. G. Fether-aton-Dilke, who charges his brother's wife with having been unfaithful to her husband. The lady, who is now a widow, her husband having lately committed suicide, declares that the charge is utterly untrue, and has commenced criminal proceedings for libel against her brother-in-law, based on hia letters to her husband repeating hi? charges in the strongest language. The case has been primarily heard before a police magistrate, who has sent the defendant for trial, though that step will still further delay the prosecution of Lord Aylesford's divorce suit.

Meanwhile, however, we have had another young nobleman before the Divorce Court as a petitioner. This is the Earl of Desart, who is now about thirty-three or thirty-four years of age. Some seven years ago he married a Miss Minnie Preston, the daughter of a country gentleman in Yorkshire, but their union does not seem to have been a happy one. The lady gave birth to a daughter in one year after their marriage, and this is their only child. Very little later on, the Earl had to complain of the conduct of his wife, though he has discreetly drawn a veil over her misdeeds at that time, for he continued to live with her on apparently peaceable terms, until he suddenly found out that she had been maintaining a clandestine correspondence with a Mr Sugden, an actor attached to the company at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. It seems that lastNovem}))v, Lord Desart, who dabbles a little in literature, was expecting some proofs from a printer, and seeing the postman coming to his house in Q.ueen street, Mayfair, he waiked to the door to take in the expected packet. Strangest of fates! He has not told us whether ho obtained the printer's proof, but what the postman put into his hand was the most ponvincing proof of the Countess's adultery. This was contained in a letter from Mr Sugden £o her ladyship, and was sent in another envelope directed to Caroline Perkins, her mnjd. Away rushed Lord Desart to his solicitors, who speedily found out more than %-vaa amply sufficient to satisfy the of the Divorce Court. Of course, Mhs Perkins was a witness for the petitioner, but even if she had nof' been, there wero others in Lord Desart's house who could have established the case, for Lady Desart was so perfectly careless and unconcealed in her relations with Mr Sugden that everybody in the house, except her husband, knew the storm that was brewing. When the case came before the Court, neither she nor Mr Sugden attempted fco make any defence. Next spring, we shall probably hear that Lord Desart is about to marry again. Of course the Court ia bound to wait several months before it makes the

decree absolute. Only a few days ago Sir Charles Mordaunt whose divorce case cannot yet hare been forgotten, entered into matrimony for the second time. A youth of nineteen rears old bas cleverly accomplished a wholesale forgery of Post Office orders, which is without, a parallel. This lad, Charles Lodge, was employed as an assistant in a branch Post Office in the city, and as the business of the office was large his employer kept in stock a large number of blank forms for orders. Selecting the last of the stock books Lodge tore out twenty-one of the forms, both orders and counterpart?, filled them up for the payment of £lO each, the highest sum for which he could issue them, and despatched them as in the ordinary course of business. If he had had the nerve to go on with his regular work the next day he might have escaped detection, but he was so eager to obtain the money that he shammed illness, and sent an excuse to his employer. A telegraph clerk was also in the swindle, and that morning the pair took a cab and went round to the various officeß on which the orders had been drawn and got them cashed. One failed, because the usual advice note had not came to hand, and this rather disconcerted the forgers, but with the other twenty orders they obtained £2OO. _ Lodge then decamped, and his employer, finding the assistant had not been ill, but had left his lodgings, had his suspicions awakened, and the fraud was discovered. The matter was placed in the hands of the polieo, who watched all the ports, feeling sure that Lodge would endeavor to escape from this country. They had to keep their eyes open for nearly three months, during which time Lodge concealed himself in Cardiff and Bristol. At length he made his way to Southampton, where justice overtook him as he was about to embark on board a vessel in which he had taken passage to America. He had well disguised himself, and when the officer spoke to him by name he denied his identity, but this did not bailie the policeman, who took him to the station house, where they found on him a photograph of his accomplice. lie then admitted his guilt, and asked what he was likely to get. On being told five years penal servitude, he seemed to think that would be rather a heavy sentence, but then exceptionally daring crimes like his must be repressed with exceptionally severe punishment. I mentioned in my last letter that Herr Daniel Bandmann, a favorite actor and a dramatic author, had been committed for trial on a charge of violently assaulting Mrs Kousby, another favorite of the London theatre going public. Bandmann denies the charge, but any way Mrs Kousby was so badly hurt that her arm turned black, and she was obliged to keep it in a sling for some time, which did not give her, in fashionable parlance, " quite too charming "an appearance on the stage, though I have seen Charles Mathews play under similar circumstances with all his vivacity. Well, the Herr's counsel thought it was going to be a big case, and so, disdainining a trial before the magistrates at the Sessions, they, making sure that the Grand Jury would return a true bill on all the charges, got the trial moved into the Court of Queen's Bench. But after all the Grand Jury have made a serious mess of it. On the first day of the Sessions they returned to the assistant Judge a true bill on all the counts, which included a charge of doing actual bodily harm, which, in the event of conviction, would be a case o f imprisonment. But next day they came again into Court and told the Judge that they had made a mistake, and they intended to return the bill only on the count which charged a common assault. For this stupid blunder they got a severe reprimand from the Bench, for a common assault could have been dealt with by a magistrate, who might have thought a fine of ten shillings or a sovereign equal to the merits of the case. Yet, owing to this silly fiasco of the Grand Jury, we are to have the full panoply of the Court of Queen's Bench, including the Lord Chief Justice of England and a special jury, brought into action to try what must turn out to be a comparatively insignificant affair, although a very great deal has been made of it, and what might have been a very sensational trial has been prematurely stopped by this error.