THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1879. OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1701, 2 August 1879, Page 2

THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1879. OUR LONDON LETTER.

[WEITTEN SPECIALLY FOB THE GLOBE.] LONDON, June 19.

If ever I should bo possessed of money and leisure enough to be able to leave this country for more than the four or five weeks which I annually devote to holiday making, I will certainly pay a visit to Now Zealand, if only for one thing—to escape the “ weather forecasts” which both morning and evening newspapers in London are now publishing, and which make life in this metropolis increasingly miserable. lam told that when one wakes up in the morning in New Zealand one sees the cloudless sky, and if you happen to lire near the shore you can cast your eyes “ O’er the glad waters of the dark, blue sea,” in which, probably, you take a morning swim. But here in London, where our good neighbors the French believe that we never see the sun, and where as a matter of fact we have seen but very little of it for several months past, we not only get up to dull skies, and not unfrequently to pouring rain, but if ever our fortune should be good enough to have a bright morning, our hopes are not unfrequontly dashed to the ground by the prognostication of our latest. scientific hoby —the weather prophecies from the meteorological office. The history of these things is not little curious. Those who know all about such affairs tell us that most ot our bad weather is due to the influence of the North Atlantic Ocean, and as we cannot escape from that we must endure it. Accordingly, the “New York Herald ” took to sending telegrams to London to tell us when we might expect bad weather, and as the storms they foretold very frequently came within the limits of time flashed from the other side of the ocean, wo were induced to think that as we had a very complete Government department of our own wo might do something for ourselves. Then the “ Times” arranged with this office to prepare from its telegrams a statement of what weather might bo expected during the day and in the various parts of this island, and very soon the “Standard” and the “Daily News” took to giving their much larger number of readers the same news. Well, it has not tended to increase the amount of human happiness. These prophecies for the most part turn out true, but occasionally they prove wrong, and in either case we are made miserable. Formerly, if sue went out believing that a bright morning was going to last into a still brighter afternoon, but it became cloudy, and a storm came on, and you got wet through, well, you could only “ grin and bear it,” and hope for better luck next time. But now if you contemplate an excursion for a few hours, such is the horrible fascination of the “ weather forecasts,” that if you have the presence of mind not to look at the paper, some one else who is going with you (I will not say out of a spirit of feminine curiosity, for perhaps I ought to attribute it rather to the higher education of women about which wo are making such a great fuss in these modern times), is ready to tell you what the weather is going to be before you have had time to think about it. Happy people in Christchurch, you have escaped this! When some of you lived in England you looked at the moon overnight, or at the way of the wind in the morning, but we have outgrown that and a horrible column in the newspaper with a picture at the top that not one in a thousand understands, followed by thirty or forty lines of type that a child can comprehend, tolls you what to expect for the remainder of the day. And still the School Board goes on teaching natural science. Well, having written a line from Byron up above, I have a desire to quote two more. Do you remember what he says about the “untoward fate ” of the poet Keats :

“ ’l’is strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself bo stuff’d out by an article.” Well, they don’t do that sort of thing nowadays : They bring an action against the “ Athentcum,” as did Mr Richard Horne Shepherd, a gentleman who has just laid his woes before a common jury of Middlesex and obtained from them a verdict in his favor with a very handsome amount of damages.

He has, for some time past, followed the occupation of remembering and searching out the earlier and forgotten productions, mostly poetry, of authors and authoresses who have since obtained considerable literary fame, and keeping note of these matters till the copyright term has expired, he has then republished them on Ids own account. Quite recently he attempted to do this with “ The Lover’s Tale,” the youthful production of Mr Tennyson, who applied to the Court of Chancery to protect him from this Shepherd, against whom a prosaic judge issued a mandatory injunction, one result of which is that by this time you have in New Zealand the complete work from Mr Tennyson, and with his latest corrections and improvements, instead of the portion of it that Mr Shepherd had ingeniously pasted together out of a concordance, for he could not get hold of a complete copy of the poem, which was only printed for private circulation. Next he tried his hand on the earlier poems of the late Mrs Browning, but her husband objected to this revival of the girlish writings of his wife, and the “ Athersoum” fired at Mr Shepherd two of its very heaviest shots, describing him as a man who had not a dash of literary taste, and one who was wholly without culture. Hero was a fine chance for the lawyers. Accordingly Mr Shepherd, having been worsted when ho was a defendant, assumed the initiative and brought an action. Now Mr Browning had not actuated the articles in the Athenaeum, but he cordially approved of them, and one of the best episodes in the trial, which took place this week, was his appearance in the witness box. Yet even his considerable reputation, backed up by the eloquent advocacy of Mr Serjeant Parry, could not prevail with the jury, who, thinking that the review had gone beyond the limits of fair criticism, gave him one hundred and fifty pounds damages. That is a large sum to pay for wounding an “insect,” as they called Mr Shepherd, who does not however find much sympathy among, literary people. I cannot get Byron out of my head to-day. I recollect the remarks ho makes when he begins to tell us about the married life of Don Jose and Donna Inez, and why they quarrelled, and a speech which Mr Justico Hannen has just made in the Divorce Court again shows that

“ ’Tig pity learned virgins ever wed,” and perhaps the very learned Mrs Lawford has often thought so too. If her’s had been an ordinary case I should not hare written a lino about her, but she has chosen to make public the backslidings of Mr Lawford, who seems to have behaved towards her as one of the best of husbands, except in one matter as to which she had forgiven him, until an overtaxed brain revived in more than its original shape the sense of his misconduct, and showed that she, like Lady Macbeth, could not “pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow.” Mr Lawford is a member of the splendid band of the Grenadier Guards, and nearly fifteen years ago he married his present wife, who was then and has been ever since mistress of a public school in Westminster, by her unremitting devotion to which she has acquired not only great professional celebrity but also quite a little fortune. Modern experience, however, has shown us that great mental work on the part of young women unfits them, more or less, for the married state, and it is proved so in this instance. She has never bee* a mother, and in the early part of last year she became mentally affected, so much so that acting on medical advice her husband caused her to be taken for some time to a private asylum, by the treatment in which she has been restored. She still, however, refuses to believe that she went out of her mind, and is fully persuaded that her husband drugged her to facilitate her removal to the Asylum. Ho was enabled to show that there was no foundation for this supposition, but that, on the contrary, he was very grieved to be compelled to separate her from their home, and, quite unintentionally, he let out a remarkable piece of evidence, which showed his great affection for her, when he incidentally mentioned that during her detention he daily visited the place and mostly took with him some present of fruit or flowers. Yet her mental disturbance recalled to her the fact that ten years ago he was the father of a child by another woman, and although, since her first explosion of wrath at that incident had subsided she had forgiven him and never alluded to the matter again, she now wished to revive the affair as coupled with what she thought had been his more recent cruelty towards her as sufficient to entitle her to a divorce. The jury, however, thought differently, and Sir James Haunen dismissed her petition, adding, in the kindest of language, that her case was a sad one, but he hoped she would be able soon to return to that life for which she had proved herself so eminently fitted.

We have a French fever very strongly upon us just now, and I do not think we shall get over it for some weeks to come. We have had nearly every season for several years a company sf French actors who have cone amongst us fora brief while, but, until this summer,no London manager has ever had the good fortune to obtain a visit from the Oomedie Franoaise, which is in the opinion of most good judges the very beet company that exists i-> this world. They very rarely perform out of France, and it is only the fact that the hietorical Theatre Franoaise in Paris stood in need of repairs and redecorations, which it would take several weeks to accomplish, that Mr Hollingshead was fortunate enough to secure them for a term of six weeks at the Gaiety Theatre, which is crowded not only every night, but at all of the frequent morning performances. Unless one has been so prudent as to secure a seat some weeks before one has to endure an awful crush for an hour merely to secure the chance of admission to a very limited area. It is the rage just now to go to the French plays. Not that any largo proportion of those who do go can understand what the people on the stage are talking about, though, if they can read French, which is not an accomplishment possessed by all, they can by the help of a book of the play, manage to get something into their minds. But most of these actors and actresses have made for themselves an individual and European fame, and not to see them would but to commit a kind of social suicide. It is not alone on the stage that they are good ; they are very fond of being received in the best society, and many entertainments of a firstrate character have been given to them. Chief amongst these was a dinner, at which they were entertained by the Savage Club, which is composed entirely of members belonging to literature and the fine arts. Here they were at home. Mr Gladstone was invited to meet them ; he accepted the offer and spent a very jolly evening, looking as free from care as if there had never been such a place as the House of Commons, and evidently quite oblivious as to the doings of a Conservative Ministry. The Lord Mayor also entertained them at a luncheon last Monday, but this was a very solemn and formal affair after the fun of Saturday night. Almost every day there appears in the newspapers some strange account of the unhappy relation between men and their wives in this country; but nothing more unfortunate has lately met my eye than the story of Mrs Kate Fitzroy, who eight years ago, married Mr Henry James Fitzroy, the eldest son of the brother of the Duke of Grafton, and heir presumptive to that title and the valuable estates which it carries with it. Mr Fitzroy has left his wife, and is believed to bo now in Australia, while she who ia all human probability will some day become a Duchess, has to appear as defendant in a County Court to evade the payment of £32, which she had borrowed of a money-lender. It is not, however, altogether her husband’s fault that she is left in these straits. When the marriage took place he settled £IO,OOO upon her, but she has been robbed of this by a solicitor, who is now in penal servitude for another crime. Of course the noble family to whom she is related do not acknowledge her. They are are descended from a King of England, and prefer to spell their name with two capital letters Fitzßoy but they seem to be ashamed of Mrs Kate, and so from the volume which is supposed to tell you all about the nobility of this land they hare excluded all mention ot her. Yet, if things in that ducal family go on as they’ do in the common world, a day must come when Sir Bernard Burke must know all about her, and inscribe her on his gilt-edged loaves. A most amusing contest between a city lawyer and a hairdresser has been fought out at great expense in one of the law Oourls, and strange to say has ended in the total defeat of the lawyer. The plaintiff, one Mr F!ux, a remarkably healthy looking [man, is the senior partner of a firm of solicitors who have offices in an upper floor in one of the largo buildings in Lcadenhall street, where they carried on business in comfort until the early part of last year, when they and the directors of the fire insurance company who occupied the first floor of the same house were

horrified to find that their landlord had granted a ten years’ lease of the ground floor and ihe basement to one Mr Gumming, who opened a hairdressing saloon and baths, a business which is particularly profitable in that part of Loudon, where the young clerks seem to require the outside of their heads attended to at least twice a week. Figaro on the ground floor soon came to loggerheads with Flux on the second floor. The smells, said Mr Flux, that came upstairs had a most serious effect on him, causing him to have headache and undue cerebral excitement. But the notions of smells are many and various. To some people nothing is more outrageous than the faint odour of parchment that has long been tied up with red tape, and few things smell more villainous than the peculiarly acrid ink which they always seem to write with in Solicitors’ Chambers. But these were odoriferous in the opinion of Mr Flux compared with the diluvium of tho Brown Windsor soap with which “ Figaro’s” customers were in the habit of washing themselves. In one matter I sympathise with Mi' Fiev. I once sat next to a man while a coiffeur »;■ iged his thick, black hair, and the fumes haunted me for days afterwards. I shudder to think of what the effect on me would be if I had to go through that experience several times a day. All these things were too much for Mr Flux, who at length called in Dr Saunders, who is medical officer of health for tho city, but he, like the prophet of old, though asked to curse “ Figaro” and his soaps, his perfumes, and his baths, ended by blessing them altegether. Nothing, in his opinion, could bo more admirable than the way in which the hairdressing business was carried on, and the ventilation of the place was as near perfection as possible. Tho jury could not get over this evidence, especially as it came from one who, Lord Coleridge wittily told them, was a professional witness, and not a witness by profession. They returned a verdict for the defendant. I should like to see what kind of a bill of costs the plaintiff will make out for himself. Ho will have a heavy one to pay to the other side.

Nine days have been consumed in one of our principal courts of law in the trial of an extraordinary claim made by an artist named Mason, against the Liverpool London and Globe Insurance Company, for the value of some costly drawings which he had insured with them for upwards of two thousand pounds, and which he said had been destroyed by fire under very singular circumstances. This case is the more remarkable from the fact that insurance companies generally prefer to pay all claims made against them, even when there is a considerable element of doubt as to the Jgenuiueness of the loss. In this instance the company in opposing, and in the end defeating the claim, had to spend so Urge an amount in costs, that they wl never r cover them from the plaintiff, and but for the sake of exposing him they would almost have been in pockety had they at once drawn him a cheque. There was no dispute that Mr Mason was an artist of considerable ability, and part of his skill was displayed in making purchases and sales of pictures by other and more distinguished artiste. He began to insure his pictures in 1871, when he took out policies in three offices. That was shortly after he had suffered from an explosion of gas, which seems to have been the first of a series of calamities that befell him. Within a year after making his first insurance he had a fire, and his claim on that occasion was referred to arbitration, which ended in all imputations on his character being disclaimed, and an award of £913 in his favor. In July, 1877, he took out a policy of £2606 on some paintings and drawings which he carried with him to Torquay, whore he went to lodge for a time owing to his wife’s illness. His story is, that towards the end of April, 1878, while they were in their parlor at night his wife suddenly discovered that it was getting late, and, riling in a hurry, she dragged off the table cloth and upset a paraffin lamp, which burned all these valuable pictures, but did little damage to the furniture in the room. He had again insured hie pictures in three offices, and ho made claims on them for between three and four thousand pounds. They defended the action which was brought against one of them on the ground that he had sought to defraud them, and that some, if not all, of the articles destroyed were copies and not the original pictures. An immense amount of evidence was given on both sides, and the jury, after a long deliberation, found a verdict n faver of tho company.