THE GLOBE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1879. OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1750, 29 September 1879, Page 2

THE GLOBE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1879. OUR LONDON LETTER.

[written specially tor the globe.] LONDON, August 14. Just at the time when the London season was coming to an end, and everybody was preparing to leave town for the seaside or the Moors, the bad weather which we have endured so long has changed, and although I cannot *say we |have had even the three hot days which proverbially count for our English summer, we have had the thunderstorms with which the same proverb makes them end. But wo have had some fine though showery weather, and the ladies, who have for so long been debarred from any outdoor display, have lately been able to show themselves off in the very pretty Pompadour silks which are now all the rage here amongst those who are young enough to wear dresses of bright colors and pretty patterns. They are exceedingly charming, and though in London these Pompadours are only sold in silk fabrics, and are therefore costly enough to make them only to be obtained by those who can afford to throw them aside after only a very brief season, yet next spring I feel sure they will be worn by almost every female j for a lady who has just been travelling through Northern France tells me they may be seen at the watering places of Normandy in very much cheaper fabrics. But what will not the ladies do for the sake of novelty? Only a few days ago a gentleman wrote to the papers to complain that a lady whom he saw at the Zoological Hardens on the previous afternoon carried a live snake wound round her arm. This reptile had not been perfectly tamed, so when the lady and her pet entered the monkey house, the snake uncoiled itself and attacked a poor little monkey, who was frightened almost out of its skin. There was quite a scene ; the other people in the monkey house were naturally quite alarmed, and the only person who displayed any courage was the gentleman companion of the lady, and he, evidently accustomed to the strange employment, coolly twined the serpent around the lady’s arm again. So strange a combination had not been known since the days when a gentleman and a lady and a serpent had dealings together in a garden called Eden. That lady however did not wear a Pompadour dress, and I don’t think the serpent had an antipathy to monkeys. An interesting family romance has been reopened by the unfortunate death of Captain Wyatt-Edgell, who lost his life in the attack on Ulundi, the stronghold of the Zulu King. He was the ultimate heir to the Barony of Brayo,l which has twice within recent years fallen into abeyance. In 1839 the first abeyance was terminated in favor of a lady who was the sister of Sir Thos. Cave. She died in 1862 when the barony again fell into abeyance, the co-heirs being two ladies —the Hon. Maria Otway Cave, who never married, and has just died, and her sister Henrietta, who was married in 1844 to the Rev. Edgell Wyatt-Edgell. This couple had four children of whom Edmund, the captain of the 17th Lancers, who has just lost his life, was the eldest. The second, Henry Adrian, also adopted the military profession, and held a commission in the 13th Regiment, but he died at an early age. The surviving brother is Mr Alfred Edgell, who is now thirty years of age. Miss Otway-Oave, who during her life time held all the family property died a very short time ago, leaving to Captain Edgell all the freehold property, which must be worth a very considerable sum. Besides this she left about £60,000 in personalty, £3OOO of which she left to her sister Mrs Edgell, who has now become Baroness Braye, £IO,OOO to Captain Edgell, who after payment of the other smaller legacies was to share with his younger brother all that was left, that is to say they would have about £40,000 to divide between them. Captain Edgell died unmarried, and thus the whole of the family property, and nearly the whole of the personalty, has fallen into the possession of Mr Alfred Edgell, who will, on the death of his mother, become Lord Braye. He is a married man and has two children, one, a hoy named Adrian Yerney to whom his great aunt left £3OOO, the other a girl Cecilia Violet, who was bequeathed £2OOO. In fact after paying his mother her £3OOO, and providing some trifling annuities to servants Mr Alfred Edgell will acquire the whole of the Braye property and title. The sad fate of Captain Edgell reminds me of how often people talk of the loss of life in war, who would not take the slightest notice of the waste of life at home. Of this we have just had two deplorable examples of men who though born in a good station of life, and in comfortable circumstances, have simply gone to the bad and died from their own vices. One of these was Mr John Davies Lloyd, of Altyrodan, in Cardiganshire, who oame of an old Welsh family, and could trace his ancestry hack as far as the time of Henry VIII. “ Welsh Wales,” however, was too tamo a place for this young gentleman, who at an early age came to London and speedily took to living what is called “ a fast life.” One of his favorite places was the Alhambra Theatre, where he became dreadfully enamored of a ballet dancer named Susannah Crowhurst. She became his mistress in exchange for a settlement of a thousand pounds per annum ; but he appears to have loved her to such an exromo degree that he some time later resolved to marry her, although he was strongly dissuaded from that step by his friends, while neither the lady herself nor her relatives seem to have been pressing on that subject. Three summers ago, in the hope of restoring his shattered heath, he went to Now York, and thence on a sporting expedition as far as San Francisco, but the severe weather he experienced while away from England made him worse, and ho died last April twelvemonth, of rapid consumption, at the age of twenty-eight, leaving his widow very well off, and so far as she is concerned his will has not been objected to. The other case is that of Mr James Simm Metcalfe, the son of a Liverpool merchant, and he has died when little more than forty years old, from the results of hard drinking, which he had practised almost from his boyhood. Three years ago he became so bad that his friends wore obliged to send him away from home to a place called Swaledale in Cumberland, and they committed him to the care of a family named Alderson. About this time his brother died, which had some reforming effect upon him, but one of the daughters of the house, Miss Jane Alderson, kept him well in check, and he was so grateful for her attentions that he proposed to her, and a year later they were married. While they were on their honeymoon tour, the bridegroom was seized with bronchitis, from which he died only three months later. Now the Metcalfe family had been strongly opposed to this marriage, especially the mother, who wag largely indebted to her son for the money which enabled her to live in some style. So when it was found that James had left all his property to his wife for her life, it was resolved to oppose the will by due process of law,but the family failed and will have to pay a heavy bill of costs. The President of the Court was evidently much in favor of the widow, and in the course of the case remarked that the best thing Mr Metcalfe could have done was to marry a respectable woman like Jans Alder*

son. His Lordship, however, made no such remark about Susannah Orowhursfc. The last case which the Divorce Court has tried in the just expired legal year, and one which occupied it for an unusual length of time and caused Westminster Hall to be crowded day after day at a time when that place is generally destitute of visitors except stray strangers who look in to the afternoon sittings of the House of Commons, was one in which the petitioner was the Rev. Newman Hall, who has been well known in London as a Congregationalist minister for upwards of thirty years. Formerly he held his services in the comparatively little chapel which the Rev. Rowland Hill built in the Blackfriars road (and which still leaves his name though it now belongs to a different denomination of Dissenters.) I forget the name of Rowland Hill’s successor, but when that gentleman died, and a vacancy occurred in the pastorate of the church, the congregation selected Mr Newman Hall, who was then a talented young man who was coming into repute in the provinces. What, however, is believe)! to have greatly favoured him was the fact that his father was the author of a tract that has been popular with every denomination of Christians, and has I am told been translated into more languages than any other book, the Bible itself not excepted. Well, having obtained this promotion Mr Hall married, and under very singular circumstances. He does not seem ever to have courted his wife, but when she was eighteen years of age, and he a dozen or fourteen years her senior it was represented to him that this young lady thought he ought to be married, and as she was the only child of her parents, and a completely spoiled one, there was no'knowing what would not happen if she did not have all her own way in the matter of marriage. Accordingly he proposed, was accepted, and this passionate beauty became the wife of a calm Dissenting minister. For a time all went on smoothly enough. Mr Hall rose in repute not only with his own congregation but also with the larger audiences of Evangelicals, whom he was called upon to address from time to time, and we have it on his own authority that he considered he would have been one of the foremost men in London had it not been for the harassing conduct of his wife. For Mrs Hall had a temper, and that no ordinary one. What it was twenty years ago we have had plenty of evidence ; what it was now was exhibited during her crossexamination, when she stormed, she raved, she cried. She almost insulted the counsel engaged in the case, and altogether behaved so that in the ©pinion of those most competent to judge, her own conduct at this stage of the proceedings lost her her case, and with it her reputation and status in society. For Mr Hall had not a very strong case to present to the jury. He explained that in spite of every tenderness on his part, and having married under such very extraordinaiy circumstances, he had speedily become very fond of his wife, but that she refused to live him on the ordinary terms of husband and with wife, and insisted on living an entirely separate life, and to such an extent did she carry this, that she not only forsook his table and his chamber, but one day, about a dozen years ago, in a violent passion she declared she would never speak to him again—a vow which both she and her husband wore forced to tell the jury she had most religiously kept. Prior, however, to this event, she had, while at Brighton, formed the acquaintance of one Frank Richardson, the son of an hotelkeeper, and himself a liverystablekeeper and teacher of horsemanship. Ho came to London, and was a constant visitor at the house of the Halls, The Rev. Newman himself did not smoke ; few Dissenting ministers of his day did, though some of them do now; but Mrs Hall thought tobacco was very good indeed for her remarkable nerves, and accordingly she and young Richardson used to smske together, and they sat up taking their cigars long after every one else was in bed. Every one knew they were on kissing terms, but until quite lately it was believed that there was nothing criminal in their proceedings. Recently, however, it has been discovered that Riehardson and Mrs Hall had on two occasions been out of town together, and on this evidence the jury found a verdict which will divorce her from Mr Hall, and enable the latter next spring to marry again. For he admits that that was the object with which for some years past he has been endeavouring to get up a case against his wife, who on her part has always been jealous of the lady who is to be the second Mrs Hall. At first Mrs Hall brought a counter-charge of adultery against her husband in reference to this lady, but at the trial she was not prepared to prove anything beyond the fact that Mr Hall had openly expressed his intention to marry Miss Mary Wyatt if he obtained his divorce, and her counsel was obliged to withdraw that part of the answer. This long-fought case has created an immense excitement in London, particularly amongst the Dissenters. After the many cases of Post Office prosecutions that have been published, the certainty of detection and the heavy punishment which invariably follows conviction it is remarkable that anyone could think it possible to perpetuate a large fraud on the Post Offioe. Yet recently we have had quite a number of prosecutions, and the latest is not the least singular. This was an attempted fraud on the money order department, and one of a perfectly novel kind. The chief perpetrator was Mr Joseph Buekworth, who kept a post office receiving house in Rotherhithe, and employed his sister-in-law, Miss Sarah Nash, for his assistant. It was her business to issue the orders, and at the instigation of Buekworth she drew a number of orders for fletitous persons, representing altogether about one thousand pounds. This money was obtained and paid into Buckworth’s own banking account, while the cheques which he drew to satisfy the demands of the post office receiver were dishonoured. When inquiry was made Miss Nash admitted the whole facts, and explained that the post office accounts and the grocery business which Buekworth carried on had got mixed up together, and cash had run short. The prisoners are to go before a jury, who probably will not think fictitious money orders are quite legitimate.