ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1914, 13 April 1880, Page 4

ART, LITERARY, AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

[English Filw.J The King of Portugal, who has lately translated “Hamlet” into Portuguese, has just published a similar version of the “ Merchant of Venice,” intended for sale in Portugal and the Brazils. Miss Marianne North is about to present her sketches and studies of tropical vegetation, Ac., to the nation, and will build a gallery for them at Row The paintings are more than one tnousand in number. The “ Academy” hears that Miss North is shortly to sail for Australia, in order to add still further to her collection. The numerous friends of the late Mrs Howard Paul will be gratified to know that a beautiful marble monument, executed by the distinguished Belgian sculptor, Raemakers, has just been erected in Brompton Cemetery to the memory of this accomplished lady by her husband. It comprises a medallion, sculptured life size, and surrounded by festoons of flowers. The monument bears the inscription, from Spenser: “ Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas; easse after warre, death after life, does greatly please. ’ Mrs Scott Siddons gave a reading at the Ashbury University, Qreeneastle, Indiana, for the benefit of the institution. She wore a handsome evening dress, and as low at the neck as ordinarily worn. On the following morning she attended the religious services, and was vehemently prayed for by a professor, who in his prayer described her dress as disgraceful to herself and insulting to the audience. The students, however, have taken her part, and the controversy is very warm. Messrs Chatto and Windus have in the press ft new volume of poems by Mr Swinburne, and a volume of poems by Mr *W*. H. Mallook, author of “The New Republic.” The Author of “Pinapobb.”— Mr W. S. Gilbert is a devoted yachtsman, and his enthusiasm dates from the success of “ H.M.B. Pinafore.” In fact, Mr Gilbert is a little bit of everything, and when he takes np a subject ho does it with dogged pertinacity. Besides being a humorist, and an admirable versifier, he has made himself by steady application a first-class militia officer, a bit of a sculptor, a draughtsman on wood, a player at lawn tennis, and a navigator of the deep. It is this last passion that he cannot resist. He is fond of ordering people about and being in command. He is at home as a captain of a crew, or as a stage manager of a refractory company. And go, when “ H.M.S. Pinafore ” was produced in New York, Mr Gilbert put on the attire of a British tar, and went amongst the chorus singers just to show them how to shiver their timbers and hitch up their unmentionables. The practical good sense of the author delighted the New York critics immensely, and the audience made Mr Gilbert appear before the curtain and make a speech, which was a model of modesty and courtesy. This tickli d the Americans.

An American gentleman who haß_ recently Tieited Florence relates the following facts relative to the novelist Ouida :—“ I saw that celebrated personage several times during my stay, and cannot say that I found her to realise in any respect the portrait that she draw of herself in ‘ Friendship.’ Ouida is very, very plain, and is, I should say, somewhere on the shady side of forty. She wears her ‘ rippled amber hair’ (vide her own novels) hanging down her back in a truly juvenile fashion; for the rest, her drees is no more remarkable for taste than that of English women in general. ‘ Friendship,’ and her preceding book, ‘ln a Winter City,’ have rendered society in Florence very shy of her, particularly as she was most severe upon those who had been most hospitable to her. The American set, for instance, who had shown hor the greatest kindness, was the one she most violently attacked. The elegant, charming, and most blameless lady whom she tried to hold up to derision under the personality of Mrs Henry V. Clams, only laughs when 1 Friendship’ is referred to, and declares that she has never read the book. For any species of social ostracism Ouida cares but little. She has no fondness for society, and spends her time in writing and in riding or driving. Perhaps it is as well, as she has pretty well exhausted the series of types in Florentine society. It is astonishing how often one comes across ‘Ouida’s people,' as the originals of her mercile. s caricatures are called. In one point she has perfectly succeeded. She has written ‘Lady John Ohalloner ’ clear out of society, and that lady now lives secluded at Flordeliaa. The real fact of the matter appears to be as follows The original of ‘ Prince loris,’ a very accomplished though by no means handsome Italian nobleman, seeing the style and splendour wherein Ouida lived, offered hor his hand, or, at all events, commenced negotiations to that end. But finding that the lady’s wealth was all derived from her writings, and that she spent her money as fast as she made it, he broke off the negotiations and gracefully retired. Hence this wrath. Hence ‘Friendship.’ And hence, too, probably another severe and spicy volume in the new work which is shortly to appear. Florentine society is cn tiptoe to see it, the universal query being, ‘ Whose turn next ?’ lam told that 1200 copies of ‘ Friendship * were sold in Florence within twenty-feur hours of its first appearing in the Tauohnitz edition.”