OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1654, 9 June 1879, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[syEciAirr written foe the glob;?.] LONDON, April 24. Sitting in front of a good lire here in London in this present month of April, I have twice or thrice read of the beautiful weather which you are enjoying on the other side of the globe and of the sultry weather which prevails throughout the Australasian colonies. Wo may have it come to us presently, and indeed the weather prophets predict it as a certainty, but at present wo are wearing heavy overcoats and stout boots, for so recently as Easter Sunday there raged over the whole of England a snowstorm which, at such a period of the year, has not been equalled for more than forty years, and it is very doubtful whether we have had such a winterly Easter during the present century. It caused deep disappointment, for Easter Monday is the first general and popular holiday ot the year, and a more wretched one could not be imagined. It is not alone in England that we have had this Siberian rigour. The same kind of thing prevails a long way to the south ©f Europe. I was over in Paris a few days ago and found the streets, which usually look bright as soon as Lent has passed, still dull with the sombre and heavy garments which people of both sexes are still wearing. Those who rule the fashion in costume tell mo that the proper thing for ladies this summer is going to be a white waistcoat made like a man’s, displayed from beneath a silk jacket made somewhat in the style of a morning coat. But unless we have a speedy change, the white waistcoat, whether for ladies or gentlemen, will have a brief life this year. Travellers state that the mountain passes throughout Europe have never been seen with such a quantity of snow on them at this time of the year, and really the Queen’s good fortune as to weather seems to have quite deserted her, for during the three or four weeks she has spent at Mr Henfroy’s charming villa at Baveno, on the western shore of the Lago Maggiore, she has scarcely had two consecutive hours of oven fair weather, not to say sunshine. Some people at homo, those who read the Court news and the first column of the Times , are much concerned to know the real molive which induced the Queen to take the Princess Beatrice to Italy at this time of the year. Those who are supposed to be able to penetrate the arcana of state and politics, declare that the object was matrimonial, and pointed to Prince Amadeus, the younger brother of the King of Italy, as a candidate for the hand of the Princess, who I may remark has remained single for a much longer time than any of her sisters. But if the Prince wont a wooing, and it is a fact that he was not long in presenting himself at the Villa Clara after her Majesty’s arrival, that single interview was sufficient to decide at least one of the parties, and it soon went the round of the clubs that the Princess had decided against him. I cannot imagine that this was the real object, for a more unacceptable suitor for our Princess I could not pick out of the “Almanac de Gotha,” but still there must have been something in it, for I equally reject as incredulous the official statement about the Queen needing repose after so many recent ordeals, for she could obtain more quietness in the Isle of Wight. In spite of the deplorable weather Her Majesty has literally been “gadding about’ ’ since she went to Italy, and doing feats in the way of exercise quite contrary to the notion that she wanted seclusion and rest. Although business in London shows but faint if any sign of revival, I am glad to find that so far as our commercial relations with New Zealand are concerned, they are of the most satisfactory nature. The meeting of the National Mortgage Agency Company of New

Zealand was keld yesterday, when the directors recommended a dividend at the rate of S per cr'nt. for the last half year, and Mr Graham, who presided, told the shareholders he thought they might reckon on a still more flourishing business in the future. 8 I notice, too, with satisfaction that your Government are inviting applications to be made to their Agent - General in London from experienced teachers who are willing to emigrate to New Zealand to undertake the education and training of deaf mutes. I hope you hare not many of such unfortunate people amongst your population, but it will pay to take good care of them. At Homo they used to be much neglected, but of recent years more attention has been paid to their welfare, and I recently mentioned in one of my letters the wedding of two of them. At present it is proposed to appoint only one such teacher, but Sir Julius Vogel is empowered to offer very liberal terms—viz., the expenses of the passage out, a salary of £6OO per annum, and an allowance of £l5O until tree quarters are provided. The University boat race has been rowed, and Cambridge has won, and that is all I mean to say about the event this year. I did not go to see it this month, and I heartily pity those who did, for they must be animated by a love of spirt too deep for my comprehension wh n tin jcm travel in the imij irity of cases many miles at exorbitant fares, and sfand for hours on the banks of bhe river in the bitter cold, and then endure a snowstorm, and all to see a traction of a race which was a foregone conclusion. A week before the race I s»id to an old and famous Oxford boating mm, who is a deal more at home in a boat, than a' the bar, “ Your friends are going to lose again ” Fie admitted the impeachment, but warned me against believing too implicitly the stories about the times in which the craws had rowed during their practice. This did not ma’tor to anyone but the purely professional sporting men ; but the result showed that this old “ coach ” could see that there wa* a faint chance for the Dark Blues after all, for though they did not win, they came very much nearer to winning than all the sporting prophets believed they would. No, on that Saturday I found a place much more comfortable than Putney or Mertlake, and a much more amusing scene than the struggle of the University crews. This was in the Guildhall in the city, where Baron Pollock and a special jurywtreon that very morning trying an action for libel brought against the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, arising out of a letter which her grace had written in reference to the character of a lady’s maid. Any year you can see the boat race, but it is at rare intervals, perhaps only once in a life time, that you can see a Duchess in the witness-box, and hear her crossexamined by ooun el. And this Duchess is a remarkable woman. She i«, in spite of years that are no longer juvenile, still a pretty woman, and she was the daughter of a Duchess who was famous for being the handsomest woman of her time. She has not always been a Duchess, for when the present Lord Westminster succeeded to the title it was only a marquisate, yet he is not the first Whig on whom unearned honours have been showered. Well, as a Marchioness Lady Westminster was contented to be served by an English maid with the very commonplace name of Jones, but when the ducal honours were seen to ho approaching, her ladyship, to ueo her own words, parted with Jones “ on account of preferring a foreigner.” By the time that Jones was looking out for another situation, her ladyship had become a full-fledged Duchess, and Jones evidently thought that a part of the lustre of the house of Westminster would be reflected on her, and that to have a character from a Duchess would give her a superior standing amo- gut lady’s maids. But in spite of possessing “all that beauty, all that wealth o’er gave,” (ho Duchess of Westminster is not happy at letter-writing. While still a Marchioness she wrote to Jones, in the first person, and concludes in a style to which Jones herself would have been superior, “ Hoping to hear of you soon quite strong and well, I remain, your sincere friend, Constance Westminster.” Fancy that! If I knew a marchioness who was my sincere friend, I think she would do something more for me than give me a character which would secure me flve-and-twenty pounds per annum for a lot of hard work and late hours. But if, as a marchioness, Lady Westminster was not good at writing letters, as a duchess she became worse, for she affected the third person in which noue but a very expert penman, and I think no pc-nwoman, can hope to succeed. Mrs Chapman, who wrote to her for Jones’ character, must have been eurSrisod at the epistle she received from Tabley [ouso ; indeed, I think if it had come to me, I should have made inquiries cs to whether it was not dictated by the housemaid rather than the Duchess. I do not possess any other specimens of the letters that are written by duchesses, but as I have a great respect for the peerage of this kingdom, I hope there is not another marchioness or duchess who would concoct such a jumble of nonsense and stuek-up-iehness. “The real truth is,” wrote her grace, to Mrs Chapman “that when the Duchess told her she was going to have a foreign maid instead of her, she went quite out of her mind.” This was the libel. Poor Jane Jones went into the witness box, and swore that she had never been out of her mind, and had never been abusive to any of the Tabley House family. She admitted, however, that one Sunday night the Duchess took out of her hand a book that had the curious title “ Passing through groat tribulation.” The defence practically was that Mies Jones became tho victim of religious mania, and the Duchess herself was the first witness called to prove this. Had her evidence been confined to this all would have been well, for she was carefully questioned by her astute counsel, Sir Heury James, aud her examination in chief concluded with tho very proper remark that she fully expected her letter to Mrs Chapman would have been kept private, adding, “as it should have been,” It was when her grace fell into the hands of the opposing counsel, Mr Wildoy Wright, that she exhibited an atnoui 6 of meanness that should be quite absent from true nobility. Mr Wright asked her why she would not give poor Jones a character to any of her noble relations. “I did not wish,” replied the Duchess “ to put my own relations to the same inconvenience which I had suffered myself, and. therefore I would not give her a character to any of my relations, whereas I would to strangers who would be ab’e to find for themselves if there was still anything the matter with ke plaintiff, and I did not wish to spoil the plaintiff’s last chance.” Mr Wright saw a good point for the jury. “Then,” asked he, “you were ready to let strangers suffer inconvenience, and not your own relations?” “Yes,” replied the duchess, “ I would be very sorry for them, but they were not my relations,” a remark which produced throughout the court a roar of derisive laughter which was evidently not to her grace’s liking. With this I left the court, for its meanness was disgusting, and the answer has b?on satirically treated all over London. However, there could bo no doubt from other evidence that Jane Jones was not quite right, and in the end the jury, though they were not men with noble relations who might be inconvenienced, gave a verdict for for tho Duke and Duchess.

Meanness, I said, and meanness seems to be the distinguishing characteristic of the noble house of Westminster. The present duke’s father was a man who was not remarkable for generosity. At his decease, the good people of Chester put up in the park which he had given them a life-size statue of him, and on one side of the largo square block of stone on which it stood was inserted a granite slab whereon the sculptor had carved the record of the virtues of him who was called “ the 2nd Marquis of Westminster.” True, ho was the second Marquis, but the Chester folk, who better recollected his penuriousness than his lineage, would persist in reading this “the twopenny Marquis,” aud so the slab had to bo taken out and another one carved, with the word “ second ” fully spelled out in fair Roman letters, as it should have been at first. Those people who, like the younger of “Helen’s Babies,” have a taste for a sensational story with a strong twang of blood in it have had no reason to complain la'ely of a dearth of their favorite news. This very day the magistrates at Richmond are holding their third sitting to inquire into a case of murder which was recently committed in that delightful metropolitan suburb under circumstances more revolting than in any instance since Henry Wain wright murdered a young woman in his shop. The victim in this case was a woman, but of advanced years, a widow named Mrs Thomas. Her life wig taken by a middle-aged female servant named Catherine Webster. The chain of evidence is yet far from complete, but enough has already been elicited to mak« plain the guilt of the prisoner, who it eeema

was under notice to leave her situation. One Sunday night she attacked Mrs Thomas in her bedroom and killed her. The next morning she was up betimes, and the neighbors believed from what they saw that she was doing a heavy day’s washing. However, after washing the clothes, she took steps to dispose of the body of her mistress. She roughly cut it up; some portions she burned in the washhouse fire, where some charred bones were afterwards found. At present it is not known what has become of tbe head of Mrs Thomas, and it is supposed that that portion of the deceased has been concealed in a black bag, which is missing, and for the discovery of which the police have offered a reward of £25. But one of the most recently discovered portions of evidence against Webster, and one of the most convincing as to her guilt, is that a few nights after the murder she was in possession of a gold plate and some artificial teeth which it is known the deceased wore. She sold this as old gold to a jeweller in Hammersmith for a few shillings. The main portion of the body of poor Mrs Thomas this female fiend put in the copper and boiled, and when the police subsequently examined this portion of the premises, they scraped off the copper a thin coating of human fat! The body was then packed away in a small wooden box—a receptacle so small that on* must wonder she contrived to squeeze so much into such a little space. Webster next procured the help of a boy to carry this box on to Barnes bridge, and, leaving him to to wait there alone for a few minutes she took the box a few paces further on, and then hurled it over into the river, and went back to the boy and took him home with her to the house where the murder was committed. She next attempted to dispose of the furniture and what she could find about the bouse, for plunder seems to have been the motive of this fearful crime. She obtained an advance upon it, but when tbe time came for the removal the neighbors to whom tbe house belonged, interfered. Still no suspicion of murder entered anybody’s mind, and the woman Webster was enabled to escape from London and secrete herself in a remote village in Ireland, where the police subsequently arrested her. Since she has been in custody she has made two “ confessions,” or statements, which can only be regarded as replete with lies. Still the first of them caused the arrest of a man, and his detention in custody for several days, and just before he was discharged she sought to incriminate another man, who, to all present appearance, is equally innocent of the crime. A great many years have elapsed since a member of the English Parliament committed suicide. The last reported case of the kind was that of the notorious John Sadlier, but a doubt has always been felt as to whether the disfigured body that was said to bo hia corpse was really his, and to this day the matter remains a mystery. But there is no doubt about the case which lias just occurred. The unhappy man was Mr Isaac Fletcher, the Liberal member for Oookermouth, who enjoyed a happy domestic life and bad plenty of money. But he had just turned fifty years of age, and is believed to have suffered both in the heart and liver. Ho was evidently suffering from mental derangement the other night when ho walked into the hall of Morley’s Hotel, at Charing Cross, pulled out a pistol, and shot himself through the head with such fatal aim that death was instantaneous. His brother, who was summoned to London to be the principal witness at the inquest, has been elected to succeed him in the representation of that little Cumberland borough where they lived. Another member of Parliament has had his name dragged before the public in a very unpleasant way —I mean Mr Erle-Drax, a venerable gentleman hailing from Dom'shire, and representing one of the litiio boroughs in that county. He has been summoned before ono of our police-courts with respect to the paternity of a baby to which a woman with whom he has had, off and on, immoral relations for a quarter of a century, swears she recently gave birth. I think the whole case has a very suspicious aspect, and should not be surprised if it eventually resolves itself into a charge of conspiracy against the woman and her witnesses, but at present the matter has not been sufficiently gone into to enable one to arrive at a conclusive opinion except on ono point - and that is, that there is not much to bo said for the morality of the elderly Don Giovanni from Wareham.