ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1737, 13 September 1879, Page 3

ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

[Prom English Files.]

Wagner has completed the orchestration of hia “ Parsifal," which is to be produced at Bayreuth in 1881. The editor of “ Truth ” figures out that a person who goes six times to the Comedie Francaise in London must pay enough to more than cover his expense of goiug_ to Paris and back for the same purpose during the regular season. Adelina Patti, it appears, has lost some of her upper notes, but, on the other hand, she has gained immensely in dramatic power. Her voice is lowered, but she will become undoubtedly one of the greatest dramatic opera singers that Europe has ever seen. According to the “ New York Herald,” the next dramatic season at the Boston Museum will be inaugurated with a new five-act play by Mr George Fawcett Bowe, in which a novel and startling mechanical effect will be introdneed. The name of the play is not given. Mr Henry Irving and M. Delaunay, the distinguished French actor, met recently at the house of a friend, and there ensued a pretty scene of mntnal admiration. Delaunay recited the ballad of “Fortnnio,” while Irving responded with the “ Dream of Eugene Aram.”

Another work by Mr Millais, entitled “The Order of Release,” which was painted twenty years ago for £4OO, was disposed of at a London sale the other day for no less a sum than £2885.

Mr Bussell, it is echoed, is to have a fee of 2000 guineas for the campaign, as correspondent of the “ Daily Telegraph ” in Zululand. Blondin gave a performance at Brussels before 25,000 people, for the benefit of the poor and the schools of the town. The success was immense, Mr Balph Waldo Emerson, who was seventy-seven years old on May 25th, lectured in Boston recently. The newspaper of that city says—“ln the delivery of the lecture he would frequently lose his place in the manuscript, and it was a pretty eight to see his daughter, who sat close by him for the purpose, direct him back to the point at which he had dropped the thread of his thought,” Joaquin Miller is reported to be very ill in San Francisco. Maud Miller, his daughter, has been recently arrested at Portland, Oregon, for having, in conjunction with her stepfather, T. B. Logan, abducted Alice M'Donald, only sixteen years of age, for improper purposes. Talk about the “ rewards of literature 1 Matthew Arnold, considered one of the most cultured and intellectual anthors in Great Britain, could not count, it is said, £IO,OOO as the direct production of his pen. Carlyle, ranked by many as the first thinker of his time, and by all as a master mind, has, after a career of continual activity and the publication of forty or fifty volumes, acquired, in his eighty-fourth year, an income of little more than £IOOO. Robert Browning, held by a number of critics to be the first of the living poets, would not have been able to support himself bad be not had a private fortune. Neither Tyndall, Darwin or Huxley ever made much money, but the late G, W. M. Reynolds made over £60,000 by his cheaply sensational novels. The “ Autobiography of the Bev, Joseph Henson,” the original Uncle Tom in Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s well-known story of slave life, edited by Mr Joseph Lobb, F.G. 8 , managing editor of the ■* Christian Age,” has attained the large circulation of 91,000 copies within twelvemonths. The volume contains portraits of Uncle Tom and Mrs Stowe. An illustrated edition for young folks has recently been issued, and has so far met with an extensive sale, “ Moody’s Arrows and Anecdotes,” also published at the “Christian Age” office, has reached a circulation of 8000 copies. Here is the financial result of the Oomedie Frangaise season stated in Mr Hollingshead’s own words and figures :—The forty-two performances yielded a sum of £19,805 14s 6d. The thirty-six night representations showed an average of £470 for each representation, and the six matinees produced a similar average of £466, the general average for the forty-two represents! ona being £172, A good story is told of the way in which Alexandre Dumas is forming a water-color gallery, and Yollon a library. Yollon is an early riser, and so is Dam as Yollon is a great billiard player, so is Dumas. Yollon arrives at Dumas’ house early, say seven o’clock in the morning. The genial Alex, proposes a game : Yollon accepts. “What shall we play for 1 ” asks Dumas. “ I should like a complete set of Shakespeare,” says the painter. “Very good j I’ll play you a game of thirty points, a Shakespeare against a watercolor.” Dumas is much the stronger player of the two, but sometimes remorse seizes him, and he lets Yollon win. Hence the painter enriches his library, and the dramatist his picture gallery.

The arrangements are in full progress for the season of Promenade Concerts at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Signor Arditi will conduct an orchestra of upwards of a hundred instrumentalists, and in addition to the leading artists of Her Majesty’s Theatre, Mdlle. lima di Murska will make her first appearance for many years in this country. Her fifth and present husband, Professor John Hill, will, I believe, also appear. Some of ns will recollect Jack Hill when ho was before in this country, playing in ' u the opera orchestra, and before he became a “ professor.” He was always a clever man, and experience has, I believe, now rubbed the corners off his little idosyncrasics. Mr Darwin has just had an interview with M. Francisque Sarcey, and the clever Frenchman describes it in a letter to bis Paris journal. M. Sarcey says he expected to find in Ur Darwin a little, broken-down old man. He knew that the author of “ The Origin oi Species” was 76 years of age; moreover,at the time Mr Darwin was not very well. M. Sarcey was, therefore, highly surprised and

delighted to find him as straight as a dart and as robust as an oak. His physiognomy reminded the Frenchman very mnch of the portrait of Goethe. M. Sarcey says he looks hale and hearty enough to live a hundred years and more. Mr Darwin, however, does not appear to be of the same He dwelt on his old age very freely, but with a tinge of melancholy. 11 It is a pity, said Mr Darwin, “to leave the world while there are so many more things to be done._ As I advance in the study of nature I discover vaster horizons, and I feel that I shall not have time to reach them.” M. Sarcey says Mr Darwin confines his ambition to the completion of two works he has begun ; one is the life of his grandfather, who was an illustrious doctor, and the other a work on vegetable life. M. Sarcey concludes his letter with a graphic picture of the happy family life of the great natural phi losopher Tom Taylor, editor of “ Punch and dramatist, has a house which is simply stuffed with pictures. There is hardly a square inch of wall uncovered. In one apartment, used as a summer room for reading,' working, or painting, the walls are covered entirely with prints of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ paintings ; and opening from this is a chamber dedicated to sculpture, where an owl perches familiarly on a bust of Minerva. Chivy, as the bird is called, is a great favorite in the family and very friendly with his master, though shy with strangers. In the dining room, where Lambeth faience and Venetian glass abound, the very implements for use on the table are works of art; and the boudoir of Mrs Taylor is a veritable cabinet of curiosities. It is impossible to be in the house without recognising the influence of Mrs Taylor everywhere. Coming of an artistic family, and being herself a good painter, she can thoroughly sympathise in her husband’s tastes ; and whiletheeyes are feasted with all they see around, she will delight the ear with such music as can seldom be heard even from the best professional pianistes. M. Sarcey, the dramatic critic of 11 Le Temps,” who has accompanied the Comedie tfrangaise to London, is said to be the severest and most impartial of critics. The “London World” tells this of him—“ Not very long ago he wrote an exceedingly favorable notice of an actress then playing at the Gymnase. The story goes that the lady, in an ecstacy of gratitude and joy, immediately dispatched a valuable diamond ring to the great critic, with her compliments and thanks. But, to her astonishment and disgust, the bauble was returned, with the intimation that M. Sarcey took no fees from those who pleaded before him and was not, moreover, accustomed to be bribed. He, therefore, demanded an apology for so gross an impertinence, which, of course, the actress had to make in terms of the deepest contrition.”